Ever since The Zetter first opened in Clerkenwell in 2004, the group has helped set the bar for London’s boutique hotel scene with its relaxed approach to luxury, characterful interiors and distinctly residential feel. Its newest opening, The Zetter Bloomsbury, continues that tradition across six interconnected Georgian townhouses neighbouring the British Museum, where check-in takes place over a glass of wine or coffee, immediately setting the tone for the rest of the stay. With interiors that have all the warmth and personality The Zetter has become known for, it’s the sort of hotel you’ll find yourself looking forward to returning to at the end of the day.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Zetter Bloomsbury, London

What’s on your doorstep?

Tucked away in Bloomsbury, The Zetter sits in one of central London’s most convenient yet often overlooked locations. The British Museum is just next door, while Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road and Holborn Underground stations are all within a short walk, making it easy to reach almost anywhere in the capital. Soho, Covent Garden, Oxford Street and the West End are all close enough to reach on foot, whether you’re heading to a gallery, catching a show or browsing the shops. Yet Bloomsbury itself is reason enough to stay put. Beyond the museums and shopping, it’s the sort of neighbourhood where it’s easy to lose track of time, whether you’re browsing an independent bookshop or settling into a café for a long lunch.

Who is behind the design?

The interiors are designed by James Thurstan Waterworth, and every shelf, cabinet and corner is layered with objects that feel as though they’ve been collected over a lifetime. European antiques sit alongside midcentury furniture, African textiles, Turkish rugs repurposed as ottomans and works by St Ives artists including Sandra Blow and Roger Hilton, while ancient Egyptian artefacts and a library of more than 600 vintage art and auction catalogues reflect the hotel’s close relationship with its neighbour, the British Museum.

It’s the craftsmanship that really sets the hotel apart. More than 500 cushions have been made from antique textiles; vintage fabrics have been reworked into upholstery, headboards and lampshades; Georgian cabinets discreetly conceal modern services, while hand-painted faux-marbled architraves, reclaimed timber floorboards, bespoke rugs and decorative pieces made by British artisans create interiors that feel deeply personal.

The room to book

Overlooking the secluded courtyard garden, the Junior Suites are well worth booking, with lofty ceilings and four-poster beds that give them all the charm of the Georgian townhouses they occupy, while marble bathrooms, richly textured fabrics, antiques and collected objects make them feel just as characterful as the public spaces downstairs. Thoughtful details continue throughout, from the well-stocked minibar tucked discreetly beneath the television to Verden amenities in the bathroom. If you’re celebrating a special occasion, however, the Terrace Suite is worth the splurge, with its wraparound terrace, claw-foot bath positioned beneath the bay window and views across the garden.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Breakfast is served in The Orangery beneath a glass roof, where leafy plants, the morning light and views onto the courtyard garden make it one of the loveliest spots in the hotel to start the day, while an à la carte menu featuring dishes such as avocado on toast or a full English breakfast is complemented by baskets of pastries, breads and fresh juices.

Later in the day, the menu moves next door to The Parlour and its adjoining courtyard garden, where elevated British classics such as Scotch eggs and sausage rolls are joined by seasonal salads and larger plates, making it just as suited to lunch as evening drinks. On arrival, every guest is also handed a coin to exchange for a complimentary drink from the bar, from a coffee to a cocktail or even one of the more premium spirits, a small but memorable touch that perfectly captures The Zetter’s relaxed approach to hospitality.

Where to switch off

The Zetter Bloomsbury isn’t a hotel with a sprawling spa or extensive wellness facilities, but that’s part of its charm. Instead, switching off comes naturally in the hotel’s secluded courtyard garden, where a drink beneath the trees on a warm summer afternoon is the perfect escape from the bustle of central London.

The verdict

Characterful, welcoming and full of personality, The Zetter Bloomsbury is the sort of place that’s just as appealing to first-time visitors to London as it is to those who know the city well. As one of London’s newest hotels, there are still a few service inconsistencies to iron out, but once those settle, the hotel has all the ingredients to become one of the capital’s most enjoyable boutique stays.

The Zetter Bloomsbury is located at 2-7 Montague St, London WC1B 5BP, United Kingdom. Rates: from £210

Elizabeth Darling’s new monograph, Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922-1932, is a fascinating insight into the formation and professionalisation of the entity founded as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922 and granted a Royal Charter in 1927, becoming the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). From an ad hoc collection of offices and studios scattered around various London locations, the newly minted Corporation started a search for a site for a dedicated, purpose-built HQ later that year.

Explore the history of Broadcasting House and the BBC in this new book

This book is the story of that building, and the locations that preceded it, along with the architectural, interior and design decisions that were made to create what has been described as a ‘Palace of the Ether’. Broadcasting House, located at the meeting of Langham Place and Portland Place in central London, officially opened in May 1932.

In modernist architecture lore, Val Myer’s monumental, curved edifice, with its façade of Portland stone and evocative sculptural exhortations of the ethos and role of a national broadcaster, has always been slightly overlooked.

The structure was considered Modernism Lite, perhaps, a soft-pedalled version of the more muscular and ideologically pure approach demonstrated by contemporary structures like Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff’s De La Warr Pavilion (1935). For the diehard modernists, the Corporation’s most effective expressions of contemporary design were in the interiors.

However, as Darling chronicles, it was the interior work of Raymond McGrath, Edward Maufe, Wells Coates, and Chermayeff that really set a standard, creating contemporary studio interiors that seemed completely in sync with the BBC’s mission to educate and modernise. Chermayeff and his peers were praised for their use of modern materials and contemporary furnishing pieces.

And yet, many of these pioneering spaces were swiftly upgraded and overhauled, either through wartime destruction or through sheer expediency – broadcast technology was moving fast, and they were quickly outdated.

As the book also shows, modern interiors often sat side by side with more old-fashioned, traditional spaces, complete with ersatz fireplaces, drapes and libraries of leather-bound books. Regardless of the interior approach, the BBC set about presenting Broadcasting House as a central part of its identity, a role it continues right up to the present day.

This is a text-heavy book, rich with research and rewarding historic anecdote. It tells a story that is still being written, albeit with the BBC’s authority and role being challenged like never before.

'Palace of the Ether: Broadcasting House and the Architecture of the BBC, 1922-1932,' Elizabeth Darling, £45, LundHumphries.com

Casual Italian may have been the big story on the capital’s restaurant scene in the past 12 months, but Londoners’ appetite for the sort of French bistro that wouldn’t disgrace the set of ’Allo ’Allo! shows no sign of waning – so much so that we’re now having to import them.

Buvette comes courtesy of New York-based restaurateur Jody Williams, whose West Village original, opened in 2011, is one of five Manhattan hotspots she co-owns with wife Rita Sodi. This is the US400 couple’s second bite at a London Buvette, after a Notting Hill outpost opened in 2020 and closed three years later.

Covent Garden, however, already feels like a better fit: squint from a pavement table under the red awning in Neal’s Yard and you could be in a French square straight out of Emily in Paris – or, perhaps, an especially photogenic enclave of Greenwich Village.

Wallpaper* dines at Buvette, London

The mood: Flea market chic

A buvette is the French word for a small bar, though Williams prefers to describe this place as a gastrothèque, her own word for a mash-up of café, bar and restaurant where one is as likely to drop in for a breakfast croissant and café au lait as a supper of cassoulet and Beaujolais.

Williams says that the New York Buvette was inspired by visits to flea markets and antique fairs, though here in London she’s been equally influenced by the building’s 400-year history and that of Neal’s Yard itself, where the British whole-food scene was kickstarted in the 1970s with the likes of Monmouth Coffee and Neal’s Yard Dairy.

Inside are exposed brick walls, warm wood finishes, a tin ceiling embossed with metallic garlands and close-set tables for two. If the dimensions feel more cramped than cosy, the best way to approach Buvette might be as an hour spent en route to somewhere else: a breakfast meeting before the office or pre-theatre ahead of the Donmar. Or pull up a solo stool at the marble counter.

The food: Small plates of bistro cooking

Williams might have a James Beard Award to her name for New York City’s Best Chef, but she taught herself to cook and spent five years in Italy and Japan before opening Buvette. All of which is to say that she is not bound by tradition. So while the menu is a love letter to traditional bourgeois cuisine – coq au vin and charcuterie, steak tartare and tarte Tatin – the presentation of the food as small plates feels bang up to date.

Not that you’ll want to split everything: a croque-monsieur, bubbled with golden-brown blisters of gooey Gruyère, is far too good to share. Carb-loading is the way to go: garlicky escargots come with slices of sourdough toast for dunking, while a tartine is spread with an artery-clogging amount of butter and draped with a salty sliver of anchovy and a tangy caper.

Not everything works quite so well when presented in miniature. A pot of moules topped with a pile of French fries makes excavating the mussels from their shells awkward, though it’s worth persevering, as the curry sauce beneath makes an excellent dipping sauce.

Even if you just stick to tap water, do take time to admire the design of the drinks list, which is beautifully illustrated as a homage to the Belle Époque and is as lovely to look at as everything else here.

Buvette is located at 2 Neal’s Yard, London WC2H 9DP, UK

Transport for London has revealed the latest in its ongoing series of Art on the Underground commissions for the cover of the pocket Tube map, courtesy of American artist Ellen Gallagher. Her piece, Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, 2026, is the 42nd commission in the series and is an exploration of the capital’s long maritime history.

The Art on the Underground programme has been giving collectable visual impetus to the pocket Tube map – the classic ‘journey planner’ – since 2004. The maps themselves date back to pre-Harry Beck days and represent a beautiful chronicle of the evolution of the design presentation and physical reach of the underground network.

Gallagher lives and works between Rotterdam, the Netherlands and New York, building up richly layered multimedia works that draw on the natural world – particularly water – history, and mythology. Even when reduced down to the compact tube map format, Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish reveals the evidence of work and rework across the surface of the image.

The result is an abstraction that teeters on the edge of figuration, and vice versa, a miniature world of interlocking forms. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish is a reference to Pip, the ill-fated young Black cabin boy in Melville’s Moby Dick, who fell overboard and was then rescued but left traumatised. The piece ‘imagines the underwater world Pip experiences; the skeletal form of a whale lying on the seabed forms the central composition and brings together themes of marine life, transatlantic history and memory’.

London was once the focal point of the country’s role in the whaling trade, with locations like Greenland Dock receiving carcasses to transform into oil, and bones to be turned into corsets. Gallagher’s commission is a mental map of this long-forgotten and bloody trade, with the skeleton shown intertwined with strands of seaweed that evoke the famously abstracted London Tube map itself, created by Harry Beck in the 1930s.

Another layer of meaning comes courtesy of London’s hidden and covered waterways and historic wells, such as Sadler’s Wells and the River Fleet. As we travel under London, all these histories are bound up in the soil that surrounds us.

As well as gracing the cover of the pocket Tube map, Ellen Gallagher’s artwork will also be seen on posters put up around the network, part of an ongoing commissioning project that has placed art in front of billions of tube passengers over the last two decades.

Art.TFL.gov.uk, @ArtontheUnderground

Crystal Palace Park's dinosaur sculptures – the world's first life-sized models of prehistoric animals – are among London's quirkiest attractions. This week, the sculptures, originally created between 1852 and 1854, have been given a refresh as part of a wider regeneration of the park, which reopened to the public this month.

Led by Bromley Council and Crystal Palace Park Trust, the work supports the long-term restoration of the Grade II*-listed park, which was created after the Crystal Palace was relocated from the 1851 Great Exhibition to Sydenham.

At the heart of the scheme was the conservation of the Grade I-listed Geological Court, home to the dinosaurs. The sculptures – created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the guidance of palaeontologist Sir Richard Owen – were made when dinosaurs had only just been identified by science. Though many of them are now known to be anatomically inaccurate, they remain celebrated as a landmark of public palaeontology and a bastion of Victorian ambition.

During restorations, specialists used paint analysis, material testing and 3D printing to repair the sculptures while preserving their original materials – work that saw them removed from Historic England's Heritage At Risk Register.

Surrounding landscape work restored historic sightlines and topography, while the Upper Lake was desilted and fitted with a new recirculation system to revive its waterfalls. The Grade II-listed Italian Terrace underwent stonework repairs, the Grand Centre Walk, designed by park creator Sir Joseph Paxton, was reinstated as the park’s historic spine, and a bust of Paxton returned to its original site.

More than 7,500 tonnes of excavated soil were reused on-site, and new rain gardens and swales now help manage rainfall. Desilted lake sediment was repurposed into 500 sq m of habitat shelving, while around 58,000 sq m of wildflower meadow and 64,000 perennials have revived the park's once-famous horticultural displays.

Accessibility upgrades, a redesigned Penge Gate entrance echoing the Crystal Palace's modular architecture, a dinosaur-dig-themed play area, and a new timber Visitor Centre by Tate + Co complete the transformation.

Together, these efforts have secured the future of a uniquely Victorian vision – restoring a space where science, art and imagination first collided, and ensuring its prehistoric residents can continue to thrive for generations to come.

Artist Benjamin Slinger captures millennial nostalgia in a new body of work entitled ‘Empire’. Here, the British visual artist creates a series of wire-frame paper lamps constructed from vintage fast-food paper bags. Launching with a show in London (23-25 July at 96 Robert Street, London NW1 3QP), the series of lamps will be available from the artist's online store.

The McDonald’s and Burger King bags were collected over the past three decades, and the resulting lamps sit somewhere between sculpture, design objects and cultural artefacts.

Discover 'Empire' by Copyright Slinger

For the 'Empire' series, Slinger was inspired by the classic ‘Akari’ paper lanterns designed by Isamu Noguchi and the graphic identities of multinational fast-food corporations.

While the lanterns are functional objects, the artist’s swapping of washi paper for fast-food bags, with their corporate and consumerist graphics, is a critical reflection on brands within contemporary life – bold and demanding attention. Through the evolving bag designs, the series also documents changes in popular culture over time.

Such dives into design and socio-economic history are not unusual in Slinger’s practice, which spans sculpture, painting and writing. However, ‘Empire’ emerged from one question: ‘How can one produce a design or mass-market object as a work of art?’

Slinger has lowered the boundaries between quality design and mass consumption. The viewer is invited to consider how something of value is produced, how certain objects acquire cultural authority, and how consumerist imagery is embedded in daily life.

An initial edition of 50 lamps will be released across three sizes and more than 25 individual designs. Each lamp is stamped, numbered and signed according to its edition.

‘Empire’ is on show from 23–25 July 2026 at 96 Robert Street, London NW1 3QP, slingercopyright.com

With its colourful ceiling mural and steel countertops, artisanal ice cream bar The Dreamery, in Islington, north London, has gained popularity for its decadent scoops paired with crisp wines. Now, the whimsical bar welcomes a takeover by Spanish maison Loewe Perfumes.

The collaboration marks the launch of the new Loewe Pistachio scented candle. The green-fleshed nuts have long been popular in the culinary realm – not least as an ice cream flavour – but have been in exceptionally high demand in recent years, particularly since the rise of pistachio-filled Dubai chocolate.

Celebrate pistachio at the Loewe Ice Cream Bar

Translating pistachio into a fragrance that balances freshness and warmth, Loewe’s candle might be the most indulgent iteration of the flavour. Crafted in Spain using natural wax, the candle is packaged in Loewe’s signature grooved vessel. Its smooth pale green housing is a perfect pistachio hue – a shade you’ll also find painted across the façade of The Dreamery in its new incarnation as The Loewe Ice Cream Bar pop-up (running until 30 July 2026).

Set within a repurposed 19th-century building, The Dreamery was launched in 2024 by Alex Young and George De Vos – the duo behind natural wine bars Goodbye Horses and Stable Wines – and serves flavours from blueberry and ricotta to croissant and custard. Now, visitors can enjoy a limited-edition pistachio flavour during the Loewe Perfumes takeover.

There’s seating for 20 within The Dreamery’s whimsical interior, which retains its existing look – dominated by British artist Lucy Stein’s folklore-inspired ceiling mural, painted on a grid of backlit, Japanese unryu rice-paper panels.

Loewe Perfume's bespoke pistachio ice cream will be served exclusively for the duration of the partnership, until 30 July 2026, at The Dreamery 20a Halliford St, London N1 3HD. Open daily, 12-10pm

Mini golf, a playful yet serious pursuit, is a lesson in world-building, a challenge which nine artists in London haven’t been able to resist.

In Battersea, Miranda July, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Delaine Le Bas, Kaylene Whiskey, Saeborg, Natasha Tontey, BKTHERULA, Soda Jerk and Pat Brassington have created interactive golf artworks. The immersive works are a reaction to mini golf’s history, after it was created in the nineteenth century by Scottish women who were excluded from ‘real’ golf courses but refused to sit on the sidelines.

This subversive spirit runs throughout, in the holes which incorporate everything from surreal video to fairground games and fortune-telling.

‘I am a big advocate for mediums that invite artists to push beyond the scope of their regular creative practices, and those that ask audiences to engage with artworks differently, and so in general I think that durational or interactive projects are really interesting,’ says curator Grace Herbert.

‘Whilst digging into the history of mini golf, I was thinking about how there are so many things in our contemporary life that we don’t think about the origins of, that we take for granted, or even infantilise a little bit like mini golf, that have these incredibly rich and even rebellious histories. From here, the idea of a mini-golf and art exhibition by women and non-binary artists whose creative practices think about identity, feminism and politics in various ways emerged.’

Herbert was keen to include artists working across mediums and backgrounds in her curation, resulting in a game here interpreted by an eclectic community which includes musicians, filmmakers, performers, sculptors, activists, athletes, and quantum physicists. The results are fully immersive – these are games you want to play.

‘The brief to artists was to come up with a concept that could be integrated with the design and gameplay, rather than say making objects that would be plonked on a course as obstacles,’ Herbert adds.

’And they all really did that. Delaine Le Bas, for example, was talking about her experience as part of the Romani-Sinti community living in the UK and often feeling a square-peg in a round hole – and so we ended up 3D printing square golf balls for her work.’

The Art of Mini Golf, from RISING Melbourne and Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), is on until 26 July 2026 Battersea Arts Centre

Mayfair dining rooms often arrive fully dressed. Latine is better when it changes outfit. Set in Lancashire Court, the Franco-Latin restaurant by London-based interior designer Victoria Vogel moves from a bright ground-floor crudo bar to a candlelit first-floor salon, a mural-wrapped private dining room and a basement lounge in lacquer, velvet and brass.

Wallpaper* dines at Latine Mayfair

The mood: A venue of many temperatures

The ground-floor restaurant is the brightest chapter: limewashed walls, solid wood tables, bouclé seating and a marble-fronted crudo bar, all gathered around an exposed brick rotunda and central chandelier. Decorative tiling nods to the seafood-led menu, while cream, terracotta, chocolate and pale timber give the room its soft sense of warmth.

Upstairs, La Candela brings white wainscoting, twin crystal chandeliers and terracotta accents into a candlelit salon. On the second floor, El Cielo turns private dining into a scenic room, wrapped in a hand-painted mural by Melissa Wickham beneath exposed oak beams and a sculptural bronze chandelier. Downstairs space, LACAV, drops the temperature: lacquered walls, burl walnut, velvet seating and brass lighting make it the late-night room: darker, richer, and much happier after dinner.

The food: Ceviche first, Béarnaise later

The menu opens with colourful crudos: bright, sharp and built around citrus, heat and sweetness. Sea bream tiradito comes with coconut leche de tigre; red prawn ceviche with mango and yuzu. Yet, the starters are where the Franco-Latin exchange gets better: snails baked with chimichurri butter and served with brioche; Cornish mussels with Latine marinière and fries; pão de queijo filled with Camembert, with the option to add Oscietra caviar.

Mains continue the exchange: grilled hispi cabbage with Peruvian curry sauce and Comté, wild sea bass with ají amarillo beurre blanc, bouillabaisse with ají panca rouille, and chargrilled ribeye with chimichurri Béarnaise.

Latine Mayfair is located at 10-11 Lancashire Ct, London W1S 1EY, United Kingdom

Our Legacy has had an address on London’s Silver Place, a narrow alleyway in the city’s Soho neighbourhood, since 2014. Then, it marked the first outpost of the Swedish brand outside of its native country, and the choice of Soho, known for its after-dark denizens and hedonistic impulses, felt fitting: since Jockum Hallin, Cristopher Nying and Richardos Klarén founded the label in 2005, it has melded Scandinavian restraint with a countercultural energy.

Which is why, when it came to Our Legacy’s expansion – sales surpassed $50 million in 2025 and gained minority investment from Luxury Ventures, the investment arm of French luxury conglomerate LVMH – the brand chose full-scale renovation over a change of address. Opening this week, its new London flagship will occupy two connected storefronts, taking over 1-2 Silver Place.

Inside Our Legacy’s renovated London flagship

‘Expanding the story was something we needed for practical reasons, both to improve logistics and to create more room for a broader selection from our main collection,’ Cristopher Nying, creative director and co-founder, tells Wallpaper*. ‘We’ve always loved being on this street, and moving to a much larger space elsewhere didn’t feel right. Keeping the store intimate and close to our customers in London has always been important to us.’

Working with the Stockholm-based architectural agency Profan – Our Legacy’s longtime collaborator, founded by Anton Bogårdh, Disa Braunerhielm and Maximilian Olsson – the team have sought to capture the juxtaposition of rigour and rebelliousness that define the label. On the one hand, the space is what Nying describes as ‘clean and almost clinical, with a subtle laboratory-like feel’, as seen in planes of stainless steel and mirrors, undulating fibreglass and strip lighting, as one might find in an industrial setting.

On the other, there are elements designed to wear and take on a patina with time: namely, sets of curtains made by Stockholm-based Japanese textile artist Akane Moriyama, crafted from silk covered with beeswax, which will naturally ‘crease, age and evolve’. Elsewhere, birch and pine, used for flooring and staircases, were also chosen to degrade with wear (often, Our Legacy’s clothing is treated to appear already lived-in, with tears, frayed edges and pulled seams recurring motifs in the brand’s collections).

Artworks appear throughout the space, interrupting the otherwise minimal interiors: hidden deep within the store is Swedish artist Tobias Bradford’s ‘Nosedive’, a sculpture that depicts a bird nosediving into a metal fan, while a series of fan zines – many of them out of print – have been curated for the space, including those by BlackMass Publishing and the Swedish publication Jazz är farligt.

‘The store’s art and design reinforce the creative references that inform the brand, bringing elements of Sweden to the UK, and vice versa,’ says Nying, who also commissioned German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg to capture ‘nocturnal London’ in a new series which will be distributed as postcards to celebrate the store’s opening.

It is an important opening for Our Legacy in its continued expansion from niche label to global fashion player: the brand now has five dedicated retail stores and, as of 2025, over 350 worldwide stockists. ‘[The renovated store] reflects our commitment to continually investing in ourselves and refining how we execute our vision,’ Oliver Saunders, the brand’s commercial director, tells Wallpaper*. ‘London has been our second home for the past 12 years, and the UK remains one of our most important markets.’

‘Over that time, we’ve built a strong community around the store, and expanding the space is both a reinvestment in that community and a way of reinforcing our presence in a city that has played such an important role for Our Legacy,’ he continues. ‘It’s a celebration of everything we’ve built over the past 12 years, while creating a space for the next chapter.’

Our Legacy London, 1-2 Silver Place, London W1F, is open now.

ourlegacy.com

There are few weeks in London’s calendar when the city feels quite as alive as it does during London Design Festival. Every September, museums, galleries and streets become the centre of conversation, where architects, designers and makers invite us to look differently at the spaces we move through every day.

The first programme announced for London Design Festival 2026, which returns from 12 to 20 September, looks at both the origins of design and its future direction. This year, both craft and artificial intelligence sit alongside one another as historic techniques are revisited through contemporary collaborations, exploring themes of migration, ecology, and cultural exchange across many confirmed projects.

London Design Festival 2026: programme announced

A bamboo pavilion with a bigger story to tell

Among the first commissions announced is The Pangolin Shield, the festival’s inaugural Landmark Project by the Anglo-Indian studio Studio Saar and structural engineers Atelier One. Installed on the Strand, the pavilion takes its cue from the pangolin, the shy, armour-plated mammal whose overlapping scales serve as the starting point for a structure made of bamboo and woven shields traditionally used by farming communities in north-eastern India.

While the pavilion could easily be appreciated for its impressive engineering, the aim is to encourage visitors to engage with it on a deeper level. It invites reflection on colonial histories, the movement of people and ideas, and the stories that materials carry as they journey across the Indian Ocean. Traditionally, the bamboo canopy serves both as shelter and as a space for contemplation, urging those on London’s busiest streets to slow down and be viewed.

Made looks back to the Barbican

Renowned for its iconic brutalist architecture, the Barbican has profoundly influenced London’s design imagination. Its impact is evident in contemporary interiors, furniture design, and even the conversations surrounding urban living.

This autumn, Made revisits that legacy with a new collection developed by designer Miriam Howitt, drawing on archival research into the estate and its original interiors. Furniture, lighting and textiles draw on the Barbican’s distinctive interiors. To accompany this, an installation at the festival explores how one of Britain’s most recognisable architectural landmarks continues to shape ideas of home decades after it first opened.

The V&A begins with an awakening

The V&A has become the spiritual home of the London Design Festival, and its annual commission often captures the mood of each edition. This year, Awakenings, curated by Carrie Chan and Kristian Volsing, looks at how design can reshape our relationship with the world around us.

Spread throughout the museum, the programme brings together designers including Aziza Kadyri, Eunjo Lee and Henry Svendsen, alongside new commissions exploring sound, identity, artificial intelligence and the natural world. There is a sense of curiosity running through the exhibition, as well as a sense that technology is no longer treated as something separate from craft. Instead, both are becoming part of the same conversation.

The Design Museum turns its attention to people behind the practice

The Design Museum’s programme spans fashion, furniture and contemporary design culture. A major ongoing retrospective celebrates NIGO, charting the Japanese designer’s influence across streetwear and luxury fashion. London-based designer, educator and cultural change-maker, Simone Brewster’s Platform installation continues her exploration of sculptural furniture and material histories, layered with references from 'palaeolithic fertility deities to African diasporic traditions'.

Away from the galleries, conversations take centre stage too. Brewster joins Jasmi Hussein, Emefa Cole and Hettie Judah for a discussion exploring design and motherhood, shifting the focus away from finished work, towards the lives and experiences that shape creative work.

Japanese craft meets contemporary design

This year, Craft x Tech Tokai Project continues its tradition of collaboration between Japanese artisans and international designers. The exhibition highlights the fusion of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design, featuring media such as ceramics, washi paper, lacquer, textiles, and woodworking.

Featuring designers such as Bethan Laura Wood, David Caon, and Philippe Malouin, who engage with artisans whose techniques have been refined and passed down through generations, showcasing the exciting possibilities born from this rich exchange of ideas.

New conversations between Asia and London

Elsewhere, MixZ continues its exploration of cultural exchange between Asia and the UK through a pair of exhibitions taking place at the V&A and the Old Selfridges Hotel.

One of the exhibitions will highlight the ancient beauty of Dehua porcelain, while the other delves into the future with immersive technologies and artificial intelligence. Throughout both presentations, the focus is on collaboration as community, underscoring the idea that true innovation seldom occurs in a vacuum. Instead, it flourishes through the shared knowledge, materials, and ideas that flow between different cultures.

Plans have been revealed for London's BT Tower to be transformed into a hotel by London-based studio Orms Architecture. The consultation, which took place on Monday (13 July 2026), included details of the planned overhaul of the 177m-tall tower, such as the extension of the tower’s podium buildings, a swimming pool, and a public square.

The proposal also revealed the project's construction schedule – and it is sooner than you’d think. After the second consultation in July is finalised, along with planning consent granted from Camden Council in September this year, construction will begin in 2029, with the building set to open in 2033.

The future of the BT Tower in London

The American hotel chain MCR is behind the transformation of the former telecommunications tower, having acquired the building for a cool £270 million from the BT Group in 2024.

The proposal includes a restoration of the former 1930s telephone exchange, the Howland building, into hotel rooms. Plans also show the addition of a second staircase and four rooms positioned around the original concrete core of the tower, using this main body as the hotel's framework.

Additionally, the 1960s façade of the main ground-floor building will be renovated to accommodate shop fronts and other retail uses. Although there is no mention of bringing back the revolving restaurant, the public will have access to a revolving observation deck at the top of the tower.

There will also be a chance to swim at the tower, with plans for a rooftop swimming pool inspired by MCR's (and Wallpaper* Travel Guide favourite) TWA Hotel in New York. While it is available to hotel guests, the public will also be able to book a slot to use the heated, infinity-edge pool.

In consultation documents, Orms stated: ‘While maintaining the overall structure, we will remove unsightly modern additions to the 1960s exterior on the ground floor. We will then introduce retail on the ground floor and add a modest pavilion structure on the roof.’

The final part of Orms’ plan is to create a public square accessible from Howland Street and Maple Street. However, it remains uncertain what will be in store within levels 24 to 30.

Since the tower's completion in 1964, the building has undergone many iterations. Originally commissioned by the General Post Office to provide telecoms, it also housed a revolving restaurant, which closed in 1971 after a bomb exploded.

After its renaming to the British Telecom Tower in the early 1980s, the tower was closed to the public altogether from 1981. Since then, BT Tower has seen a 360-degree lighting display installed, in the early 2000s, but Orms’ plans for the tower are the most expansive to date.

You can read more about the consultation here

You may have heard of Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), but how much do you know about her art? Her multidisciplinary practice encompassed sculpture, film, performance, photography, painting and drawing, but she is best known for her ‘silueta’, or ‘earth-body', works, in which she outlined her body in nature.

More than 120 of Mendieta’s works are now on view in a new retrospective at Tate Modern in London (15 July 2026 – 17 January 2027), including a nude woman’s form in a tomb covered with sprigs of small white flowers, the flaming form of a body on a sandy landscape, and the shape of a body in a shoreline, being slowly eroded by the tide. The exhibition takes us through Mendieta’s practice, from her teenage years up until around 1984, exploring her whole body of work.

'Tate's involvement with Ana Mendieta really started in the 2000s; we acquired works as early as 2009, so this is not really something new for Tate. But in 2020, when I joined [the gallery] to be in charge of moving image, the first acquisition I worked on with my colleague Mike Wellen, who is the co-curator of this show, was an acquisition of six films by Mendieta, so our representation of the artist really grew tremendously from 2020,’ explains the exhibition’s co-curator Valentine Umansky.

Tate has the largest holding of any museum of Mendieta’s films and this is the biggest-ever UK exhibition of the artist’s work. Many of the works on display have never been shown in the country before.

Mendieta was exiled from Cuba, where she had had an affluent childhood (until her father became a political prisoner), to the United States at the age of 12; there, she lived in foster care with her sister. She went on to study art at the University of Iowa, gaining her MA in 1972, and even in the very early stages of her career she experimented and pushed boundaries by working with themes of violence, gender and ecology. In creating and recording ephemeral works, she explored core themes of death, energy, gender, nature, transformation and spirituality, the last through references to the religion Santeria.

In an early work, Moffitt Building Piece, 1973, she staged the aftermath of an accident on a public pavement and recorded the public’s reaction to it in a series of photographs. This is shown in the exhibition alongside a film work that shows the artist painting the words ‘She Got Love’ in red on a white wooden door. Her work, although it sits in the canon of its time, today feels urgent and radical, partly due to Mendieta’s great gift for image-making and the fact that her subject matter resonates in the current moment.

‘One thing that might be most important is that our awareness of ecology has fundamentally shifted [since Mendieta’s time] and so I had a feeling that younger audiences [and others] in the UK would be very sensitive to some of the topics raised in her works that maybe were not read in this way in the 1970s or 1980s – particularly, her desire and drive to blend [with] or dissolve in nature, and also her care for what we would now call a sustainable mindset,’ Umansky explains.

This is echoed in the restaging of a number of ephemeral works by Mendieta, realised for the exhibition in collaboration with her niece and the head of her estate, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta.

Where no instructions were left for realising these works, Raquel collaborated with the curators at Tate to recreate them as closely as possible in a gallery setting, in some cases for the first time since they were conceived.

Yemaya Gifts, 1982, was originally created for Museo Barrio, an important place for Latin American and Caribbean artists; it has been recreated in sand and mushroom corals for the first time for the Tate Modern exhibition.

For a work in the Untitled: Silueta, 1978, series, a part of the Old Westbury forest at New York College has been recreated using found timber and found and foraged soil, moss and stones.

‘We worked very closely with Raquel Cecilia Mendieta,’ Umansky adds. ‘She had done a series of restagings, but this one [from the Untitled: Silueta, 1978, series] was the first [restaging of that particular work], so it's always an experiment.’

These restagings act as an essential bridge between the documentation film and photography and what must have been the very powerful immediacy of Mendieta’s performances. They also speak to the theme of rebirth that recurs throughout her work.

Much of Mendieta’s work was essentially ephemeral, although very well documented. The exhibition includes sections that reference symbolic locations important to the artist’s work, such as The Grove and The River, while a section called The Repertoire looks at repeated patterns, materials and motifs in her work.

Previous discussion of Mendieta has often centred on the circumstances of her death in 1985 (her husband, artist Carl Andre, was charged then acquitted of her murder after she plummeted from his apartment), but here, we get a deep dive into her legacy as an artist and the impact of her work.

Among the films we see in the exhibition is Sweating Blood, 1973, and Blood Feathers, 1974, where Mendieta covered herself with blood and feathers, transforming herself into a kind of bird, and Grass Breathing, 1974, where she created a kind of pulsing grassy site. There is also the series she made with writer and poet Morty Sklar, Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants), 1972, where she took his facial hair to create a beard on herself. Alongside are works that sit gently in nature, to be later washed away, or where the artist blended her body with the landscape. She was experimenting with gender, identity, physical presence, a love of natural spaces and the ambiguities therein.

There are also many drawings and paintings, previously unseen in London, and a work titled Parachute, made with children that Mendieta taught while working as a primary school teacher.

This show goes some way to replacing myth about Mendieta with fact. It also places the artist alongside the likes of Tracey Emin and Frida Kahlo (also the subjects of Tate Modern exhibitions this summer, Emin until 30 August, Kahlo until 3 January 2027), who have similarly been the focus of much mythmaking, and demonstrates that however much we might know about Mendieta’s life, there is more to learn from her art.

Umansky reflects that the show forms ‘part of the work that the artist’s estate has been doing very meticulously over the last ten years to correct some of the factual errors that were written around [her] work. This is a process that allows for better definition of the works so that they're seen as [if] brand new and in the best possible light.’

‘Ana Mendieta’ at Tate Modern, London, 15 July 2026 to 17 January 2027, tate.org.uk

Mayfair has no shortage of polished dining rooms, but Miko Mei Fair has arrived to turn up the heat. On the ground floor of MiMi Mei Fair’s Georgian townhouse, the 50-cover Thai restaurant is the latest opening from Samyukta Nair, the restaurateur behind London hotspots Jamavar, Bombay Bustle, MiMi Mei Fair and Nipotina. Led by chef Soonthorn Apaipat of Koyn Thai, it pairs townhouse glamour with cooking rooted in fire, balance and sharing.

Wallpaper* dines at Miko Mei Fair

The mood: MiMi’s more eccentric sibling

Miko Mei Feir delivers a darker, more intimate mood than the usual Mayfair new opening: candlelight, glossy wood, patterned banquettes. The interiors keep the townhouse framework and dial up the colour: teal and timber panelling, red leather booths, brass accents and tropical wallcoverings, with gold-leaf lotus details adding a subtle Thai nod. The Peacock Room, set behind folding timber screens, adds a private dining room for eight, while hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper ties it back to MiMi Mei Fair upstairs.

The food: Robata smoke meets Thai balance

Chef Apaipat moves across Thailand – Isaan heat, Southern coconut richness, Central Thai balance – with Koyn Thai’s robata-style grill guiding the kitchen. The headline dish is the Apple Wood Fire Peking Duck Penang Curry, adding MiMi Mei Fair’s signature duck into one of Thailand’s best-loved curries. Elsewhere, there are spring rolls with tofu and spring onion, prawns pla ra, and toasted rice beef tenderloin. Don’t miss Sabai Sabai, the signature cocktail, which mixes Mekong rum, kaffir lime, Thai basil and soda. For no-alcohol drinkers, Akoya comprises cucumber, Thai basil, lychee, lime and sparkling jasmine tea.

Miko Mei Fair is located at 55 Curzon Street, London W1J 8PG, United Kingdom

Chef and restaurateur Jackson Boxer has form when it comes to opening beloved local restaurants: Brunswick House has been going strong in Vauxhall since 2010, while in 2025, Dove replaced Boxer’s Notting Hill restaurant Orasay, on the same site, with something more approachably laid-back (not least with its off-menu cheeseburger, rationed to ten per service).

For his latest venture, the chef heads to Clerkenwell with Vesper, its name the Roman word for the planet Venus, as it appears at sunset: the time to enjoy one of the restaurant’s bracingly cold cocktails, ideally at a bistro table on the pavement as the Exmouth Market passeggiata slides by, with the promise of a Gorgonzola and dry-aged beef burger to follow.

Wallpaper* dines at Vesper, London

The mood: Built to last

Designer Jermaine Gallacher, a longtime friend of Boxer’s, approached Vesper with the simple brief of creating somewhere he would wish to be a regular himself. ‘I wanted to give Jackson a restaurant that would stand the test of time,’ he says, ‘something classic and refined.’

The result occupies a double-fronted corner space with timber-framed floor-to-ceiling windows, a bar by the entrance and a candlelit dining room beyond. Gallacher found his design cues in unlikely places – an ancient studded door spotted on a trip to Italy became the inspiration for the bar, while a photo of a pair of carved lips in an old book about 1980s New York restaurants informed the stonework.

The team of London artisans Gallacher collaborated with were closer to home: architectural stone carver Tom Pullen hand-carved the limestone panels according to Gallacher’s drawings, artist Lawrence Andrew Chalk made the studded zinc bar and curved cloakroom door, while the steel and brass sconces, candlesticks and cast-pewter door handle come courtesy of sculptor Will Jack. ‘I think what’s so magical about really good restaurants is that they are the sum of all parts,’ Gallacher says. ‘It’s not just about the food or the interior or the people that frequent them. It’s all of those things and more. Things made with love are honest, true and never date.’

The food: Comfortably ambitious

Boxer is far too canny an operator not to give his customers what they want, which here means including an edit of the Dove greatest hits: not just that beef-rib burger, but a spin on the fermented potato pizzette, here topped with stracciatella, mortadella and mostarda.

But Vesper goes beyond merely transplanting the Dove menu from Notting Hill to east London. Take the chuck-eye steak Diane with grilled maitake mushrooms and baked saffron rice, which promotes a neglected cut of beef to star billing. It’s the sort of clever update on a retro British classic that has made Boxer one of the UK’s most in-demand chefs (he’s also a consultant chef at Cowley Manor). But if you prefer your classics more straightforward, order the half-roast chicken with bread sauce to share.

And if you’re here just to drink: a bowl of homemade salt-and-vinegar crisps with trout roe and French onion smoked cream is the poshest version of chips and dips to snack on with a citrus-spritzed martini.

Vesper is located at 8-10 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QA, United Kingdom

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

At the top of Regent's Park Road, where Primrose Hill's terraces begin their steep climb, a tall, narrow townhouse manages to feel both serious and unserious, sophisticated yet lighthearted.

Home to a couple and their dog, the three-storey house had a specific brief – one that isn't requested enough in a world of extreme curation in high-end design: the ability to not feel ‘overly interior designed’. Finding an interior designer to execute this wasn't necessarily easy, but in 2021 the couple came across Studio Iro's breezy, under-curated work in a magazine feature.

The architectural bones were already in place, courtesy of Chassay & Last, who opened the rear of the house into a double-height volume, slotted a mezzanine above the kitchen, and installed a stone, blackened-steel and glass staircase, drawn together with a shadow-gap detail sharp enough to cut.

Recreate the mood

Onto this, Studio Iro refined the layouts and specified finishes in a way that never feels over-engineered. Central to achieving this are the colour threads running through the house: a blue leopard-print carpet in the hallway sets the indigo undertone found throughout the property, echoed in a deep navy in the bedroom, lavender-grey stone in one bathroom and ridged dark-blue glazed tiles below ground. A burnt-orange sofa and terracotta accents on the top floor provide the contrast.

Texture plays an equally important role in lending sophistication. Clay Works limewash brings a soft, chalky quality to the primary bedroom and bathroom, while limewashed wood, stone and microcement create a tactile backdrop throughout. On the lower ground floor, microcement flows from the open-plan interior out into the garden, pairing with blackened-steel kitchen cabinetry and exposed brick for a calm, industrial feel.

Where the house does allow itself a flourish, it's a considered one: a kitchen island developed with Adam Blencowe, and a custom chest of drawers, vanity console and rug for the primary bedroom. The kitchen, built with Roundhouse, sets a Caesarstone worktop against blue-painted timber joinery; De La Espada dining chairs gather around a table the clients already owned.

That instinct – to add rather than replace – runs through the whole project. The clients' collection of modernist furniture, some of it decades old, wasn't cleared out to make way for something new. Instead, Studio Iro folded it back in, setting it alongside contemporary pieces in kindred materials.

The refusal to over-assert gives this house its authority. Studio Iro's real skill here isn't visible in any single room – it's in everything left alone, and every decision not to push further than necessary.

Wimbledon is, of course, defined by the tennis – or is it? What fascinated me most was everything that surrounds it. Over generations, the championships have developed a visual language of their own, built through colour, ritual, uniforms, architecture and an extraordinary attention to detail.

Discover the vibrant design codes of Wimbledon

Working almost exclusively with tight frames, I focused on colour, geometry and repetition. This year's brilliant sunshine became an important part of the story, casting hard shadows across the grounds and reducing many scenes to graphic compositions of green, white and purple. The tennis itself often became secondary to the systems that support it.

Every element feels intentional. One particular standout was the London Fire Brigade, who act as stewards and security throughout the fortnight. Professional, impeccably presented and genuinely welcoming, they quietly contribute to the uniquely British character of Wimbledon, where traditions and systems have been refined over generations.

Then there are the strawberries. They are one of those enduring Wimbledon rituals that have become almost mythological, with queues for them sometimes longer than those for the courts themselves. Alongside the uniforms, scoreboards, pristine grass courts, straw hats, Pimm's and the iconic all-white dress code, they form part of a visual language that is unmistakably Wimbledon.

The Dairy, the newest development by Echlin in London, offers that covetable but extremely rare combination: it brings together a central, yet very quiet and discreet location; a highly design-led interior; and a slice of Notting Hill history, set in a reimagined 19th-century former working dairy facility. The result is not only prime real estate, but also a carefully thought-out selection of eight homes.

Explore The Dairy by Echlin in London

The project was led by developer Black Treacle, with architecture by Frost Architects. Echlin conceived the interiors, sensitively restoring and reworking the industrial building's fabric to retain its character as much as possible, and adapt it confidently and delicately to the 21st century.

Keeping that balance was important to the design studio. 'Industrial buildings have an inherent sense of theatre – the scale, the light, the layers of history. They resist formula, which is exactly what makes them so compelling to work with. At The Dairy, our team's approach was to reveal and reinterpret that heritage rather than overwrite it,' said Samuel Pye, creative director at Echlin.

The result is a gentle composition that straddles rawness and sophistication, defined by neutral colours with bold accents and a material palette of exposed brick, steel and hard edges. The period structure's existing tall ceilings and big windows add drama to the interiors and ensure each apartment is completely unique, with its own personality.

There are barrel-vaulted ceilings and Crittall-style windows, but also a peppering of warm woods (oak herringbone flooring, for instance) and curated art that soften the atmosphere and create a play between rough and smooth. Limestone and quartzite surfaces in bathrooms and kitchens add texture and coolness.

Caring for the historic building was important to the team in more ways than one, explains Pye: 'Industrial reuse is one of the most sustainable models we have. The most successful examples treat industrial living not as a style, but as a framework for longevity.'

Featuring generous proportions and carrying a sense of restrained elegance, the Dairy's eight apartments have now started going on the market.

echlinlondon.com

thedairynottinghill.com

London’s top suites have moved beyond the question of thread count. They now sell temporary ownership of the city: a roofline, a piece of a landmark, a view, an all-suite ecosystem. Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane enters that conversation with 14 newly renovated suites. Spanning Deluxe, Park and Grand Suites, alongside the Presidential Suite, the collection gives the hotel’s upper floors a further ritzy residential character.

Tour Four Seasons Park Lane’s new suite collection

Designed by London-based studio Interiors with Art, the spaces take their cues from the manicured Hyde Park and the manners of Mayfair. Sycamore panelling, brushed metal, Murano glass lighting and bespoke furniture run through the rooms; soft greens, autumnal shades and gold tones draw from the lush greenery across the road, while an art deco influence is kept to the details.

The Presidential Suite, on the fifth floor, might be the most formal of the set: three bedrooms, marble bathrooms for each, a guest powder room, rosewood panelling, Gaudi stone marble, dining for six and a private fireplace, all looking towards Hyde Park and Park Lane. The Park Suite, on the other hand, takes a softer route, with gold and burgundy tones, a fireplace in the living room and the ability to connect to a Mayfair Suite for a larger two-bedroom arrangement.

The Deluxe Suite is the city-facing option, set higher in the building, with panoramic views, a separate dining area and a layout that can also expand into two bedrooms. Meanwhile, the Garden Suite, which overlooks the hotel’s private garden, pairs 128 sq m of interiors with a sprawling 60 sq m landscaped terrace.

Suite guests can opt for butler service on request, packing and unpacking, Bentley house-car drop-offs in the local area, in-room styling and, for signature suite bookings, airport transfers. The concierge team includes seven Les Clefs d’Or members, while complimentary tickets to sold-out exhibitions across the V&A South Kensington, Young V&A and V&A East add a useful cultural key to the stay.

‘Each of these suites has been designed as a sanctuary, where every detail, material, and experience reflect the character of London and the care of Four Seasons,’ says Lynn Brutman, regional vice president and general manager at Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane. ‘Whether guests are with us for a weekend or a month, they’ll find a space that feels both elevated and effortlessly personal.’

The renovation sits neatly alongside the hotel’s stellar line-up of facilities: Pavyllon London by Yannick Alléno, the tenth-floor spa overlooking the skyline, and Bar Antoine, where the new Savoir-Boire menu turns French culinary cues into cocktails – from a Croissant Old Fashioned with croissant-infused cognac and Byrrh to a Cornichon Martini with olive oil vodka.

Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane is located at Hamilton Pl, Park Ln, London W1J 7DR, United Kingdom

If you've ever experimented with gardening but were unsure where to start, head straight to this new London greenhouse pavilion, which has just launched within the Barbican Estate. Titled The Veggery and erected, not only to inspire the public to explore seeds and plant growing, but also to mark the closure of the 2026 London Festival of Architecture, the project was created by Studio Folk Architects and Raskl, with the help and support of NLA and the Culture Mile Business Improvement District.

Explore The Veggery, a new London greenhouse pavilion

The project was awarded to the architecture practice and the design-and-build studio through a competition. The fun structure appears as part-folly, part working allotment, featuring a playful structure, which is, however, practically minded and lined with shelves that hold a variety of plant pots for seed growing.

The greenhouse pavilion sits on a hexagonal footprint. It features a vaulted polytunnel roof, water butts that double as columns, and a turnip finial at its very top. The form is meant to straddle the worlds between the traditional greenhouse typologies often found in English countryhouse farms and estates, and the Barbican's brutalist architecture forms – in particular its barrel-vaulted roof.

Patrick O'Keffee, co-founder and director of Studio Folk Architects, said, 'We’re really excited to see The Veggery installed in its new home, and become an extension of the Barbican’s iconic public realm for the summer.

'We’ve worked hard with the project team to develop a programme of activation that aims to foster a sense of shared ownership. It’s a space that does a lot – a greenhouse, an event space, a classroom and a spot for lunch – so we hope everyone can find something they enjoy in it.'

Giant paper collages produced during workshops with students from the neighbouring City of London School for Girls adorn its translucent façade elements, nodding to historic stained glass motifs. The aim is for the pavilion to become a place for community and social gatherings as much as for plant knowledge.

Dan Rose, director of Raskl, said: 'Raskl has been proud to work alongside Studio Folk, LFA and Culture Mile BID to bring The Veggery to life at St Giles. Organisations like the Culture Mile BID set ambitious goals for the public realm, and projects like this only succeed when design and delivery are worked through together from the start.

'What makes it most exciting is the site itself – a working church, a school with its own growing programme, and a community that will actually use the space long after the festival ends. We're glad to have helped turn a strong idea into something they can all make their own.'

studiofolkarchitects.com

raskl.co.uk

Every London village needs its butcher, baker and, if not a candlestick maker, then a fishmonger. All are to be found on Chelsea’s Pavilion Road, which over the past decade has established itself as one of London’s smartest foodie thoroughfares. Now, after seven years of success, the street’s resident fishmonger, The Sea, The Sea, has moved over the street into bigger new digs, where the original fresh fish counter-cum-chef’s table concept has been expanded and joined by a 40-cover bistro upstairs and a terrace for 28 out front.

Wallpaper* dines at The Sea, The Sea

The mood: Restaurant and retail

Designer Benjamin Wilkins worked on the first iteration of The Sea, The Sea and says he ‘borrowed from the brand DNA, which I broke down into three core elements: the hard-working utilitarianism of the seafood industry, the natural beauty of the food offering, and the comfort of the guest.’

Weathered timber and textured plaster contrast with stainless steel and bright lighting in the downstairs seafood shop to evoke the energy of a fish market in Cornwall or Scotland, where much of the produce for sale on the central ice-display table is sourced from small boats. Come the evening, the table transforms into a seafood bar for 10 diners, surrounded by dry-ageing cabinets displaying house-aged fish.

As The Sea, The Sea founder Alex Hunter explains: ‘First and foremost, this is an operationally practical design. We’re effectively running two businesses – restaurant and retail – in one building, so that operational efficiency is paramount, but we do it in a way that feels clean, un-muddled and elegant, much like the plating of our food.’

Upstairs in the bistro, Wilkins says that ‘the existing pitched ceiling evokes the hull of a fishing boat and lends itself to the narrative of the space.’ Which is to say an airy and unpretentious room where art from Patrick Caulfield and Alexander Massouras lines the walls. Fans of the original The Sea, The Sea will find it comfortingly familiar; for newcomers, it’s convivial and relaxed.

The food: Quite the catch

Hunter numbers some of London’s best restaurants among his clients – two-Michelin-starred Ikoyi and one-star Kol buy their fish from him – so rest assured that the quality is top-notch. Head chef Nick Marsden has the likes of Dovetale, Pitt Cue and The Laughing Heart on his CV, so is a dab hand at putting together plates that offer sophisticated simplicity: pickled Fowey mussels with sunsweet melon and lovage from the raw bar, perhaps, ahead of grilled half Cornish lobster with vin jaune sabayon.

Small plates include cuttlefish ragu with salsify and green almond, while larger plates to share take in whole fish such as plaice with wild garlic, capers and pickled dulse (the shop has its own seaweed counter). And of course there are oysters everywhere, presented with cucumber and apple vinaigrette on the side and the option to add the restaurant’s in-house caviar per oyster.

In a hurry? There are freshly prepared lunch boxes to take away, whether ready-to-eat sashimi sets and shellfish rolls or a miso black cod or Singapore chilli crab to put in the oven. After all, what else would you expect to find in Chelsea than London’s poshest ready meals?

The Sea, The Sea is located at 243 Pavilion Road, London, SW1X 0BP, United Kingdom

In our monthly series, we highlight the products, places and experiences we’ve bookmarked – and that you won’t want to miss.

As Europe sizzles in the summer heat, queuing and crowds are best avoided. But that doesn’t mean your cultural calendar needs to cool off. Take your cue from our editors and drift off the beaten path – dodging the hotspots while keeping your diary rich with art, design and discovery.

Discover an Indonesian art collective, slip into a Stoke Newington dining room for Asian-fusion cooking, or immerse yourself in a new programme from cultural platform Forefront. For their summer escapes, our editors decamp to a Munich art museum, trade Mallorca for its quieter cousin Menorca, and lose themselves in the colour and chaos of Cartagena.

Stay cool, but don't stay at home.

The escape: Cartagena, Colombia

Anna Fixsen, US editor

July Fourth may mark America’s birthday (and a big one at that!) but my (British) husband and I typically celebrate by getting out of the country for our wedding anniversary. This time around, we’re making a beeline to Cartagena, Colombia, a city that’s captivated us ever since we first visited four years ago. We’ll be staying in our favourite place, Casa del Arzobispado, a gem of a hotel located in a 17th-century building in Cartagena's historic walled city, a Unesco World Heritage Site. From there, we’ll do what we do best: take in the local culture, marvel at the beauty of the Caribbean and feast on heaps of ceviche. As a lover of winged critters, I am particularly looking forward to a trek to the Aviario Nacional de Colombia, where I can’t wait to spy coastal birds like herons, pelicans and flamingos.

The art museum: Haus der Kunst, Munich

Hannah Silver, art, culture, watches & jewellery editor

I have wanted to visit the incredible Haus der Kunst in Munich for a long time, and the opening of multi-disciplinary artist Tomás Saraceno’s major exhibition later this month is the perfect excuse. Saraceno works at the intersection of art, architecture and science, and will be unveiling a major new co-commission, encompassing a permanent piece of land art, as part of the show.

The Eurotrip: Menorca

Sofia de la Cruz, travel editor

I spent so many childhood summers along the Mediterranean coast, back when I loathed the sticky humidity and the feeling of sand somehow lingering on your skin for days. Now, not so strangely, it is exactly that sensation I find myself craving. I’m looking forward to a few days by Menorca’s pristine waters, before moving on to the thrum of Ibiza’s balmy, buzzy evenings.

The event: Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy

Léa Teuscher, sub-editor

I’m looking forward to introducing my family to a fantastic London tradition: the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Held every year since 1769, it is the world’s oldest open submission exhibition – anyone can enter their artwork for a chance to be displayed on the great walls of the academy’s Burlington House on Piccadilly.

This year the Royal Academicians, led by Ryan Gander for this edition, have sifted through thousands of creations and selected over 1,800 artworks. The rooms are packed with every kind of art – from drawing, painting and photography to sculpture, architecture and film – made by either members of the public, emerging artists or household names. Even if you don’t buy anything, it’s great fun to play ‘guess which artwork is by a famous artist’ or count the red dots marking how many editions of the same piece have been sold. Plus, there are late openings on Fridays and Saturdays (with a gin bar and regular DJ sets).

The music: Madonna, Robyn, Wolf Alice and Joan Jett

Charlotte Gunn, director of digital content

July is a live music extravaganza in London, with this week being particularly stacked. I've been fortunate enough to have been invited to Madonna's 'Club Confessions' on Thursday night – the official launch party for her much-anticipated new album, 'Confessions II', out this Friday. I've heard a few advance songs, and guests would be wise to arrive ready to dance.

On Friday night, Robyn continues the party at The O2 for her 'Sexistential' tour – currently in my top five album releases of 2026. And on Sunday, one of Britain's best guitar bands, Wolf Alice, play their largest headline show to date in Finsbury Park along with Lykke Li, The Last Dinner Party and Rachel Chinouriri. For a slice of rock nostalgia, the inimitable Joan Jett comes to new London venue the British Airways Arc next week – her first show in the capital in 16 years.

Get tickets for Joan Jett, Robyn or Wolf Alice.

The exhibition: 'Rakyat Pasti Menang', Taring Padi

Gabriel Annouka, art editor

I’m already circling 8 July for Indonesian art collective Taring Padi’s 'Rakyat Pasti Menang' ('The People United Will Never Be Defeated') at Ibraaz. The exhibition brings together banners, puppets, prints and archives spanning nearly thirty years of collective making, presented in the Majlis at Ibraaz, a space dedicated to meaningful dialogue and exchange.

93 Mortimer Street, London W1W 7SS
Open 8 July-22 November 2026

The restaurant: Cálong

Anna Solomon, digital staff writer

This month, I’ll be stress-testing the credibility of Cálong’s fusion of Korean and European cooking – think kimchi reimagined as French-style fritters, or roast lamb saddle with gochujang. If the buzz is to be believed, chef Joo Young Won makes the collision feel inevitable. A veteran of Michelin-starred Galvin at Windows, he’s traded the West End for a Stoke Newington dining room, bringing fine-dining technique down to earth. I’m hoping for some serious crunch on those fritters – likewise Joo’s legendary fried chicken. The grilled pork jeyuk and pan-fried hake with mushroom and seaweed dashi also sound particularly good.

It’s an intriguing concept that stops just short of fine dining – a more affordable, thoroughly worthy alternative to the tasting-menu circuit.

The platform: Forefront

Ellie Stathaki, architecture & environment director

Part of London cultural platform Forefront's activities, a new series is being launched this summer, and I am very much looking forward to visiting and meeting the initiative's co-founder, Dicle Guntas, managing director of developer HGG, in July. The new family of shows centres on pairings between architects, artists and designers, and it kicks off with newly commissioned work by architects Bureau de Change and textile artist Ptolemy Mann, curated by Venice Biennale British Pavilion curator Maria McLintock. The exhibition is free to visit and is held at 134 Forefront on Old Street. Knowing Bureau de Change co-founders Billy and Katerina's work, and learning more about Ptolemy's approach, guarantees that we are all in for a treat of colour, pattern and inventive material use.

'Intertwined', Bureau de Change x Ptolemy Mann
134 Forefront, 134 Old Street, London EC1
Open now

The Museum of Architecture's newest activity, a bonsai treehouse exhibition set in a leafy central London park, has something for everyone. There is delightful miniature architecture, reminiscent of a fun, adventurous dollhouse; green spaces to elevate the soul and provide some cool shade; and workshops for visitors of all ages, to both explore architectural model making and concepts, and bonsai tree growing. Opening this weekend (4 July – 31 August 2026), the show is the perfect antidote to the UK capital's current hot summer spell.

Tour this bonsai treehouse exhibition in a central London park

The display is arranged at the heart of a small park, a green square in a quiet corner off Connaught Village. The mini treehouses and their plant pairings are set on plinths, offering a breath of fun and fresh air to the lovely, traditionally laid out residents' patch.

It all started with an idea the Museum of Architecture was working on a few years back, centred on a giant treehouse. The idea soon evolved into a miniature version, and indeed, not one but many, the institution's director Melissa Woolford explains.

'The range of practices joining “Bonsai Treehouses” this summer is really exciting – from some of the most established names in architecture to brilliant younger studios, every one of them has embraced our brief. Each bonsai in the collection is unique, and we asked every architect to respond to that individuality: to design for the specific tree in front of them, not for a treehouse in the abstract. The results are surprising, thought-provoking, and genuinely fun to discover.'

Architectural participants include larger and established studios such as Foster + Partners, Haptic Architects and White Arkitekter as well as boutique and more emerging ones – among them EcoLogic Studio, McCloy + Muchemwa and Macro Micro Architects.

The variety in approaches to the treehouse designs is also wide and entertaining. Each practice was given a bonsai tree to work with, and Foster + Partners, for example, found inspiration in mycorrhizal fungi – 'the buried networks through which trees quietly sustain one another across a forest floor', they explain.

Nothing could have materialised, however, without the help of Peter Warren, founder of Saruyama Bonsai, who collaborated with Woolford and the architects and brought his valuable expertise in bonsai-growing to the table.

He said: 'I have brought trees from my own collection to this exhibition – each one shaped over many years, and every one with its own character. I was very curious to see which trees would be chosen, and how each architect would respond to the particular form in front of them. I hope visitors will be delighted by the pairing of tree and miniature built structure.'

The exhibition will be complemented by a programme of creative workshops for all ages. Offerings will include treehouse making, treehouse gardening, and a bonsai masterclass with Peter Warren himself.

Bonsai Treehouses Exhibition is on 4 July to 31 August, 9am-6pm, Oxford Square, a short walk from Connaught Village at Connaught Street and Albion Street.

Advanced booking strongly recommended

museumofarchitecture.org

Over its three-century life, LSO St Luke’s has taken on many forms. Originally built in 1733 as St Luke’s Church, the building later fell into ruin before being restored and transformed into the London Symphony Orchestra’s headquarters in 2003. Since then, it has welcomed world-renowned artists including Elton John, Annie Lennox and Bruce Springsteen, while also becoming a valued community hub.

Now, following a multi-million-pound upgrade, the Grade I-listed venue has opened a new suite of facilities, giving one of the capital’s most distinctive cultural landmarks a new lease of life.

Inside the new LSO St Luke's

The works, led by Levitt Bernstein, build on the practice’s original transformation of the building in the early 2000s. Rather than reinventing LSO St Luke’s, the project carefully enhances its existing character. The qualities valued by the orchestra have been retained, while technical infrastructure, acoustics and public spaces have been upgraded to support a wider range of creative work

‘Every intervention has been shaped by the need to respect the historic character of the building while making it more appropriate for contemporary use,’ states Arts Studio Director at Levitt Bernstein, Mark Lewis

Central to the transformation is a new bespoke Audio Control Room, designed to meet the highest standards of recording, mixing and post-production. Featuring an impressive Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 reference monitoring system, ATC speakers and an Avid S4 console, the space gives LSO St Luke’s a world-class technical backbone.

Linked to every performance space in the building, the Audio Control Room allows the venue to accommodate a broad range of uses, from orchestral recordings and podcasts to broadcast projects and commercial content. The main Jerwood Hall has also been upgraded with new acoustic measures to significantly improve sound quality. Alongside this, the enhanced Clore Rooms and Master Control Room provide premium digital and broadcast recording facilities, including a camera gallery for high-definition capture.

‘We now have the facilities we need to support our work properly,’ says Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra, Kathryn McDowell.

Careful attention has also been given to how people arrive, move through and experience the building. The aim was to make the underground spaces feel more natural, warm and welcoming,’ says Lewis. Improvements include changes to the main entrance, enhanced external lighting to the façade, more accessible spaces and the introduction of gender-neutral facilities.

‘We wanted to make the building more appropriate for the needs of today,’ says McDowell.

For the managing director of LSO, these changes have shifted how the former church can be used. ‘The project has opened the building up in a completely new way, making it more connected, accessible and better equipped for the needs of artists, producers, and filmmakers’

With its historic shell, LSO St Luke’s is a striking music venue rooted in the past yet designed for the future. Like the London Symphony Orchestra itself, it brings together heritage and innovation, creating a place where history and music meet. ‘LSO is a historic orchestra with a contemporary heart and this building is exactly the same.’

For over 60 years, Frank Bowling has explored what a line can express. Curated by Claudia Tobin in collaboration with the artist, ‘Driven to Draw’ at The Royal Drawing School in London brings together sketches, collages, works on paper, and paintings from his archive. Drawing has always been a steady part of his work, and even now, in his nineties, Bowling approaches it each day with a mix of chance, discipline, and skill.

In the show, Bowling, best known for his large, colourful paintings, in which paint moves freely and expansively, with colour extending beyond the canvas, lets visitors get closer to the details, line, surface, and paper, showing drawing as an active part of his process. The exhibition spans from his earliest student sketches to recent works that use threads, ribbons of paint, and various tools.

‘I'm not sure the two are separable,’ Bowling says about drawing and painting. ‘I've been saying for years that I'm drawing in my paintings, drawing with the materials themselves.’ For him, tools like the spray gun, palette knife, and even ‘the bucket left in a pool of paint’ are all ways to draw. He often lets paint pour and watches where it travels, allowing the material to find its own path and create lines as it moves.

Paper, by contrast, offers a different kind of agency. ‘Perhaps it's the nakedness of it,’ he says. ‘The paper doesn't wait, and it doesn't forgive.’

Running from 25 June until 22 August 2026, the exhibition unfolds across three sections: early drawings from Bowling’s years as an art student in the 1950s and 1960s; expanded drawings from the mid-1960s onwards; and recent works that continue his search across various mediums of paper, paint and surface.

Born in British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1934, Bowling came to London, completed national service in the RAF, and studied at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney. In 1966, he moved to New York, where his work entered into dialogue with abstraction and colour-field painting. His career reflects an art world slow to fully recognise him – he has been knighted, made a Royal Academician, celebrated worldwide, but late. For years, Black artists like Bowling were expected to explain their work before being seen as complex. ‘For years, I resisted talking about my work in those terms because it's so obvious,’ he says of Guyana's influence, ‘and because I was determined not to allow people to put me in some kind of box.’

The early drawings show an artist learning through attention, using houses, building sites, figure drawings, and portraits, many of which were rediscovered from a ‘battered portfolio’ stored under the stairs for years.

After national service, with a lack of resources and no paint left, Bowling wrote poems and visited museums with help from Keith Critchlow and his family, studying Titian, Rembrandt, Goya and Vermeer at the National Gallery and Tate. ‘Before I knew it, I was doing more drawing than writing,’ he says. ‘You can't always explain why the road you take is the one you take.

‘There was a time when drawing was the only thing standing between me and nothing,’ he says. ‘If I have to get out of bed, if I have to be awake, then I'm going to draw.’

One of the most charged recurring forms in Bowling's work is the map, as seen at the Royal Drawing School. As a child in Guyana, he outlined the country freehand at school, again and again, ‘never quite getting it right’, an exercise that left what he calls ‘an agony’. Years later, in the mid-1960s, he was painting a canvas in New York – in such a way that the paint followed the progress of the sun and shadow across the room – and he noticed the outline of South America appear unexpectedly. It would go on to become a familiar motif.

He speaks too of tracing Vermeer postcards, and of tracing as choice: ‘What you define, what you leave out. It's revision. It's argument.’

In the recent works, drawing becomes entwined with thread, cloth and the labour of the hand. Bowling speaks of threads ‘scrunching and spooling’, staples gathering like flotsam, and ribbons of paint moving over paper. These materials return him to his mother, who was a dressmaker and milliner in New Amsterdam, and to the intimate knowledge of making that shaped his earliest understanding of touch, repetition and care. He uses the German word Fingerspitzengefühl, meaning ‘fingertips feeling’, to describe her dexterity with fabric, pinking shears, a needle, and thread. ‘I think of her guiding a line of thread through cloth as she went about her work making a dress or a sari,’ he says.

Seen through his reflections on his mother, the recurring circles that drift across many of Bowling’s paintings begin to feel newly charged with family presence, especially in relation to works such as Tracing of a photograph of Frank Bowling’s mother. They suggest return and continuity, carrying the quiet force of a parent whose gestures remain alive in their offspring’s work. Whether consciously autobiographical or not, they seem to hold traces of the domestic world Bowling recalls so vividly: the fabric, the thread, the careful making, the maternal line passing through paint.

Bowling has a word for what intimacy can reveal: ‘thingness’, the recognition of the quality of a thing in almost anything, leaves, paper that looks like leaves, the sensation of matter holding its own life. ‘A large painting makes a claim,’ he says. ‘A drawing keeps it close.’

The Royal Drawing School has shaped the exhibition as a space for practice as well as viewing, encouraging visitors to participate. In addition to a special publication designed as both a catalogue and a sketchbook, which includes blank pages that invite visitors to draw, the exhibition offers drop-in drawing stations set up in the gallery for visitors to create their own sketches inspired by Bowling’s work. On 1 July 2026, the online talk ‘Drawing Dialogue: Ben Bowling & Claudia Tobin on Frank Bowling’ brings Bowling's son Ben into conversation with the curator.

After moving to New York in 1966, Bowling heard painting being declared dead; he didn't believe it then and doesn't now. ‘What endures is quality,’ he says. ‘That's the only thing.’ That belief underpins the launch of the Frank Bowling Foundation, which became a registered charity on 24 June 2026, timed to coincide with the exhibition and focused on expanding public access to art education. The foundation's mission is to support emerging artists, create opportunities for art education, and foster appreciation for painting and drawing among wider audiences.

Now 92, Bowling speaks with an acute awareness of time. ‘I have to accept that time is no longer something I have a great deal of,’ he says. ‘I find that the less of it there is, the more present it becomes in the work.

‘I'm still going to work in my studio every day because I think something new will emerge from the liquid paint that no one has ever seen before. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm after.’

‘Frank Bowling: Driven to Draw’ runs from 25 June to 22 August 2026 at the Royal Drawing School, 19 to 22 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3SG

A cooling evening breeze is much appreciated after stepping out of the Tube exit at Notting Hill Gate. What is even more of a relief in the summer heat is that Kinz, a new Lebanese brasserie in the district, is only a few steps away.

Locals in the area may recognise the building from a previous incarnation. Designed by Sir Edward Maufe, it was a branch of Lloyds Bank. With tall ceilings and exposed brick walls, it has the restrained and almost clinical elegance that Maufe was known for. Yet, once you’re inside Kinz, his 1930s architectural severity is balanced with a warm and inviting atmosphere.

If you think the interior is reminiscent of Palestinian restaurant Akub, you are not mistaken. Founded by Rasha Khouri Bruzzo, co-owner of Akub, alongside brothers Jad and Karim Lahoud, Kinz blends authenticity and modernity in both its aesthetic and its food, highlighting the multifaceted flavours of Lebanese cooking.

‘The project is rooted in the food and traditions I grew up with – the small details, rituals and flavours that are passed down at home rather than written down. Kinz takes its name from the Arabic word for “treasure” and is our tribute to those treasures: cherished recipes, generous cooking, and the spirit of Lebanese food as it’s meant to be shared today,’ says Khouri Bruzzo. ‘It’s a place designed to feel as natural for everyday visits as it does for long, lingering meals.’

Wallpaper* dines at Kinz, London

The mood: a trove of authenticity and modernity

The interiors were spearheaded by London-based Fare Inc. Working with the pre-existing architecture, they implemented pockets of warmth by injecting colour. This is seen with the bright teal in the entrance deli space, which is broken up with a neutral tone in the central area. The ochre-hued bar and mezzanine glow from the far end. ‘Refined zones are needed in such a large space to create a more inviting atmosphere, yet we still wanted to highlight the original architecture of the space with pared-back tones that complement it throughout the main room,’ explains founder Annabel Harrison.

Above the heart of the dining area is a wine-red, oversized lantern that acts as a modern ‘sun’ for what feels like a courtyard-style space, albeit indoors. ‘The lantern [helps create the feel of] an elegant terrace, accentuated further by striped banquette seating and iron dining chairs,’ says the designer. ‘The red was chosen to add vibrancy to the otherwise delicately finished ceiling and original metal braces of the bank.’

The bank vault is converted into a wine room. A space that was built for security has been softened to allow for intimacy. ‘Lighting has been really important here, so there is pretty much no overhead lighting, only very low-lit wall lights and soft LED highlighting the wines. The walls and ceilings are drenched in Roman Plaster paint, which has softened the swathes of concrete and the steel beams, and we have a single, glass-grape pendant over the sharing table, for a playful nod to its purpose,’ says the designer.

The urban charm of Lebanon informed the practice’s design choices. Taking inspiration from Beirut’s metalwork, the studio designed iron screens to divide the retail and entrance area from the restaurant space, and continued this up the staircase and along the mezzanine edge to create a street-balcony feel. Harrison explains that they wove in squares of colourful seeded glass that glow in the sunshine and add a vibrancy to the space.

The food: a menu designed to be shared

The menu offers an array of flavourful morsels that showcase the best of the country’s flavours. Plates come out at similar times, creating a beautiful spread. To begin, we recommend the hummus, meat kibbeh (bulgar shells stuffed with spiced lamb and beef, with pine nuts and onions), and the spinach patayer, which are filled triangular pastries.

There are three salads, which add a refreshing zestiness to the savoury dishes. We suggest the fattoush, which is scattered with gem-like pomegranate seeds and fresh mint. A menu highlight is the warak enab – tender lamb cutlets resting on a bed of vine leaves and courgettes stuffed with fragrant rice and spiced lamb. But leave room for the flourless chocolate cake. It’s decadently delicious; you can’t go without.

The constant bringing and clearing of plates adds a sense of buzz to the atmosphere, giving Kinz the feeling of a welcoming local restaurant. It is easy to find comfort in the design’s small cultural details and the consideration of the menu, making you feel right at home.

Kinz is located at 50 Notting Hill Gate, London W11 3JD, United Kingdom

‘I was ready to give up painting,’ says British artist Dale Lewis. ‘I wasn't making any money, and I was just spiralling. I thought I had pushed it as far as I could.’ He began studying at horticulture college, but, ‘I didn’t know how much I would miss painting’, he adds.

His fourth exhibition at London gallery Edel Assanti – his first solo show in London in five years – is perhaps his most personal yet. Throughout, Lewis reflects on this crossroads, looking back to his childhood and intertwining these specific memories with considerations on class, mental health, nature and identity.

Lewis, who received his Fine Art BA from London Guildhall in 2002, had established a distinctive style, often dissecting contemporary issues through a black humour lens. Now, though, Lewis is digging deeper, revisiting personally significant works such as his grandfather’s death and a childhood spent in a damp council flat, reworking them into large-scale paintings in acrylic, oil and spray paint.

‘When I started working again, I thought it's got to be really personal,’ Lewis says. ‘It's got to pack a punch. I thought it doesn't matter if anyone comes and sees them; I was making them for myself. In the beginning, there was a lot of raw canvas, a lot of broken energy. I think this has gone right back to the start, but it's also mixed with what we've learned in that period of time. After Covid, everything shifted, including the way the world is. Everyone I speak to feels like that, that feeling of not knowing what you're doing. There is a sense of sadness – maybe it is not just mine.’

The works speak to this. In The Bell, a Christmas tree is garnished with baubles of memories, from the protests over hotels being used to house migrants that Lewis witnessed in his Essex hometown to a surreal tribute to The Only Way is Essex TV star Gemma Collins. In Mould, Lewis is back in his childhood bedroom, flying the Union Jack in a nod to both innocent fantasies and nationalist violence. His horticultural education is apparent throughout, too, particularly in Kiss Goodbye, which reflects on the temporary brilliance of two extinct species of butterflies.

‘It’s been cathartic,’ Lewis adds. ‘You're facing things and presenting them back to yourself, and you can leave them there. Anyone can look at them and make their own story.’

Dale Lewis is at Edel Assanti until 14 August

edelassanti.com

Utilitarian and unassuming from the street front, All Projects, a new gallery spearheaded by architecture studio EBBA, has recently opened its doors in Hoxton, east London. The project, housed in an old brick-clad warehouse, sits adjacent to the practice's own workspace – yet it is more than simply a showcase for its work. This flexible space has been conceived as a platform for multidisciplinary collaboration and creative cross-pollination across the fields of art, architecture, design, fashion and music.

Tour All Projects, a new gallery by EBBA

Working beyond the strict remit of building architecture has long been part of EBBA founder Benni Allan's thinking. The architect has been approaching his profession in broad and inclusive terms since the inception of his dynamic studio in 2017, and when we first met him in 2021 – as part of our profile series on London's exciting emerging architecture studios – he told us: 'We are not afraid of trying different things and use the process of making to help generate something that is least expected.'

Allan remains true to his word, and All Projects is an extension of his ambition. When the ground-floor space next to his studio became available, he snapped it up, spruced it up and launched it as a hub for creative expression – expressly beyond architecture.

All Projects' motto is that culture does not operate in a silo. The gallery aims to build upon 'EBBA’s record of collaborating with key cultural protagonists, including the listening bar Space Talk and music festival Houghton’, Allan explains.

The main space has been cleaned up and painted white in order to accommodate a variety of activities and exhibits. Film programmes can also be offered, projected against the crisp white walls.

That said, the gallery maintains its character and historic patina, with various existing surfaces refurbished and beautifully juxtaposed against contemporary additions – EBBA's own designs for anything from furniture to sinks and storage. Sleek metal designs meet with all-timber constructions that showcase the practice's feel and material palette.

All Projects launched with events by independent institutions such as bookstore Tenderbooks and the Architecture Foundation.

All Projects, Unit 3 Mill Row, Whitmore Estate, London N1 5RL

eb-ba.co

RH has arrived in London, and it's done so in style. The American luxury home furnishings brand – formerly known as Restoration Hardware – has chosen 7 Burlington Gardens, one of the city's most storied addresses, for its new flagship.

The project marks RH's first London outpost, following its 2023 debut at Aynho Park – a 400-year-old landmark estate in Banbury – and subsequent openings in Paris, Milan, Brussels, Madrid, Munich and Düsseldorf. But London, it seems, demanded something different in scale and ambition.

The venue is Uxbridge House, a rare surviving Palladian mansion designed in 1721 by Italian-born architect Giacomo Leoni for the 1st Earl of Darnley. Restored and reimagined alongside three adjoining landmark properties, it now houses what RH bills as the largest curated collection of luxury home furnishings in the world. Working with Foster + Partners, the brand has unified four buildings – spanning five levels and over 5,000 square metres – into a single destination encompassing retail, dining, design and culture.

Visitors arrive through a Roman Doric portico into the Architecture & Design Library, where herringbone floors of European white oak and museum-style plinths frame a collection of rare classical books. The centrepiece is a 1521 first Italian edition of Vitruvius' De Architectura, a foundational text of Western architecture. Through Leonardo da Vinci's later interpretation, its principles of proportion helped shape the design philosophy that continues to influence RH today.

A scenic lift designed by Foster + Partners – its shaft clad in champagne gold-finished steel and glass – connects all five levels. The Wine Bar and Tea Salon, finished in Bronze Amani Spanish marble, sits nearby, while deeper in the mansion the former banking hall has been reborn as the The Dining Room: a 136-seat restaurant where champagne-lacquered Roman columns rise nearly eight metres to a coffered ceiling hand-finished in gold leaf, tiered chandeliers of hand-blown Venetian glass suspended from mirrored skylights above. The menu leans into British classics like rib roast and fish and chips, cooked on custom Molteni rotisseries.

Upstairs, the first floor's historic Piano Nobile state rooms retain their elaborately decorated 18th-century ceilings by master plasterer Joseph Rose, now framing RH Interiors collections. The second floor is arguably more dramatic still. Designer and hotelier Anouska Hempel has created two spaces: the The Perch at RH London, with its smoked-glass aviary canopy, blackened églomisé walls and bar of pure Absoluto Nero marble, which opens onto a terrace garden of laurel trees, diamond-laid marble floors with water rills and grand glass birdcages evoking the domes of Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. Nearby, the World of RH Lounge is anchored by a 360-degree hologram floating within a case of bronze and fluted mirror.

The third floor, meanwhile, has been transformed into a sheltered garden oasis beneath a massive ridged skylight of triangular glass panels and hand-selected European white oak beams, housing RH Outdoor among fountains, pleached plane trees and open fireplaces.

Situated opposite the Royal Academy of Arts, between New Bond Street and Savile Row, the location is as deliberate as everything else here. RH London is a store, yes – but it's also a statement.

Bridging that gap between traditional London townhouse and the metropolis's rich offering of purely contemporary homes, Vabel Townhouse is the newest development created by Vabel – the design and development studio founded in 2009 by Daniel Baliti and Jeremy Spencer. The business has been making its mark on the capital with its design-led, architecturally rich projects, and the latest, set on the south end of Queensway, a stone's throw from Hyde Park, follows this creative approach to the T.

Discover Vabel Townhouse in London's Queensway

Inspired by the timeless nature of Victorian townhouses and terraces and following the rhythm of the street's massing and facade grids, Vabel Townhouse scales up the single-family home property into a boutique, just 28-home new build structure clad in elegant light brick.

Upon stepping inside, the visitor is greeted by a calming, block-surface and richly minimalist lobby. Warm, dark timbers balance out the vibrant, immersive pink and green stone on the floors and walls. It is all symmetrically placed in a manner that draws on the art deco grandeur of interiors such as Eltham Palace, around a contemporary fireplace, with a discreet reception desk to one side.

Upstairs, units range from one- to three-bedroom ones, including apartments and maisonettes. Two penthouses crown the top. Green spaces, from the rear garden (accessible to all, and leading to the residents' gym) to the planted roof at the front, where the building is set back, enrich the living experience, adding private outdoor areas which complement the nearby, public, leafy expanses of Hyde Park.

The Vabel creative team designed all interiors and crafted different iterations and moods with the first five of nine fully furnished apartments that Vabel Townhouse will offer. The high level of bespoke attention ensures every interior is brimming with personality - with not only joinery and built-in furniture and elements such as kitchens, but a lot of the furniture, too, being tailored to the specific project, or sourced especially.

'From the beginning, our ambition was to create homes that are differentiated and offer an elevated living experience. Every element of the design has been carefully curated to create a sanctuary of calm, but also to energise and inspire, from the architectural language of the building through to the bespoke joinery, natural stone, landscaping and interior finishes within each residence,' says Spencer, who is also the creative director at Vabel.

'What makes this project particularly special is the extraordinary level of attention to detail that has gone into every decision. As a fully integrated design and development studio, we have been able to oversee every aspect of the process, ensuring that the original vision has been nurtured through to completion without compromise. The result is a collection of homes defined by exceptional craftsmanship, beautiful materials and cutting-edge design – enriching the human experience.'

The scheme also features work by award-winning design consultancy Greenspace, which has completed a comprehensive brand and strategy programme for Vabel, refreshing its corporate masterbrand identity.

The project follows Vabel Lawrence in Seven Sisters, and is only one of the two projects Vabel has in Queensway. Further up the road, a second Vabel residential development is currently in the works.

vabel.co.uk

Nick Molyviatis spent his career in some of London’s most respected kitchens, including Kiln and Oma, before becoming co-owner of Singburi. For Zylia, he has teamed up with restaurateur Barry Karacostas, whose Cypriot heritage and two decades in hospitality informs the menu alongside Molyviatis’s Athenian upbringing. The result is a contemporary Greek-Cypriot taverna shaped by childhood memory, family recipes and professional experience – and a shared obsession with charcoal grills.

Wallpaper* dines at Zylia, London

The mood: Built on contrast

The idea for Zylia’s interiors took shape over several Cypriot beers in Nicosia. Architect and Red Deer co-founder Lionel Real de Azúa was being shown around Cyprus by Karacostas when the pair began talking about the contrast between sleek modern design and the pieces Karacostas had grown up surrounded by. ‘We wanted to bring together the confidence and elegance of the London hospitality scene with the warmth, generosity and familiarity of your giagiá’s dining table or local taverna,’ Real de Azúa says.

Delicate Lefkara lace sits against stainless steel tables and shelving, handwoven wicker bread baskets sourced from Limassol rest against stripped-back London brick, and a service counter is built from stone quarried at Gerolakkos. ‘Nothing is intended to feel nostalgic,’ Real de Azúa says, ‘but everything carries a sense of memory and patina.’ His reference point throughout was Diporto, the 139-year-old taverna in a basement near Athens Central Market. ‘The materials are simple, the proportions are right, and the beauty comes from authenticity.’

The other reference point came from the menu itself, with Molyviatis’s sheftalia – small, rustic, packing a punch – becoming a kind of metaphor for the design brief. ‘There’s a directness to both the food and the interior,’ Real de Azúa says of details such as traditional Cypriot tiles and green leather booths. ‘Warmth comes from texture, craftsmanship and use rather than embellishment.’

The food: Dip and mix

Those sheftalia appear as four chubby caul fat-wrapped pork parcels resting on sliced onion, parsley and sumac – but before that, order some bread, which arrives as a basket of oregano-flecked warm pitta to dredge through creamy-and-crunchy taramasalata with cracked carob rusk or smashed feta and yoghurt adorned with a roasted chilli pepper to mash up for heat.

Then it’s a case of pick-and-mixing your way through a selection of small plates such as Metsovone cheese balls slicked with honey, or a contemporary spin on spanakopita presented as a pastry stack of crispy hand-stretched filo, before hitting up the charcoal grill for a heap of chops (pork, beef or lamb), or the house special of milk-fed lamb shoulder kleftiko, a blanket of slow-cooked comfort food. Either way, a bowl of hand-cut chips is non-negotiable.

Wines are Greek, beers Cypriot and the cocktails a blend of cutting-edge mixology and Mediterranean ingredients: as creative a blend of heritage and here-and-now as the rest of this place.

Zylia is located at 6 Bedford Street, London, WC2E 9HZ, United Kingdom

London’s Spanish restaurant scene has never been more varied or more vital. The city’s love affair with Iberian food stretches back decades – from the early champions who first put Manchego cheese on the map, to the tapas bars of the Noughties that made small-plate dining a way of life – but what is happening now goes well beyond chorizo and calamares.

Today’s Spanish London spans Basque grills, no-bookings tapas counters and neighbourhood gems devoted to regional cuisines, all underpinned by a shared reverence for quality ingredients and the pleasure of eating well without spending a fortune. That, at least, is the idea, although the final size of the bill is likely to depend on the amount of Spanish wine consumed. Here are the eight best places in London to sort your jámon from your jerez.

The best Spanish restaurants in London

Alta

This elemental-looking two-floor restaurant (a sibling to Japanese Moi on the other side of Soho) brings the live-fire cooking traditions of northern Spain’s Navarre region to Carnaby Street. Upstairs, beautifully presented plates of artfully sauced dishes excel with vegetarian options – try the oyster mushroom with shiitake and pine nuts – though there’s also 35-day aged sirloin to share. From mid-June, downstairs has become the more informal Bar Alta for pinxtos and vermouth.

Alta is located at 9 Kingly Court, Carnaby Street, London W1B 5PW, United Kingdom

Arros QD

Quique Dacosta holds three Michelin stars for his eponymous restaurant down the coast from Valencia and the chef brings the same serious approach to bear on Spanish rice cookery at this Fitzrovia dining room. The paella valenciana – chicken, rabbit, garrofón beans, artichokes, veal and herb stock – is a revelation for anyone who think paella is just prawns, and if the 10 other rice dishes don’t appeal, there’s Atlantic octopus cooked on the six-metre wood-fired stove.

Arros QD is located at 64 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8NQ, United Kingdom

Barrafina Dean Street

Cal Pep in Barcelona inspired this now five-strong group of tapas bars, but the no-reservations Soho branch is the most fun and closest to the spirit of Spain. Arrive before 6pm to avoid a long wait, but even if you do have to queue, there are few more pleasant ways to stand in line that with a glass of rosé cava in one hand and a plate of ham croquetas in the other. The straightforward cooking is based on quality ingredients: crinkly pimientos de Padrón, runny-yolked chorizo tortillas, or a fleshy-pink plate of gambas rojas.

Barrafina Dean Street is located at 26-27 Dean Street, London W1D 3LL, United Kingdom

Ibai

A Basque-accented steakhouse near Smithfield Market, Ibai specialises in Galician Blond beef from cows raised on grass pastures until the ripe old age of 16, by which point the meat has developed a rich pungency. Grilled over charcoal, it is the beefiest beef imaginable. Elsewhere are Cantabrian anchovies with arbequina olive oil and pâté Basque with truffle honey and grilled bread. The meat-importer owner’s smaller tapas bar Donostia and charcoal grill Lurra occupy opposite sides of Seymour Place in Marylebone.

Ibai is located at 90 Bartholomew Close, London EC1A 7BN, United Kingdom

Morito

This tiny offshoot of Sam and Sam Clark’s Moro grafts that restaurant’s North African sensibilities onto Spanish small plates. A handful of tables line the corridor-like space, but the counter is the place to sit – or at an outside table on vibey Exmouth Market when the sun is shining. Order the crispy chickpeas with chopped salad and tahini yoghurt.

Morito is located at 32 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QE, United Kingdom

Pizarro

Extremadura native José Pizarro has established himself as Spain’s unofficial food ambassador to Britain and Bermondsey Street is his embassy. For breakfast there’s his all-day dining spot Lolo’s and tapas at his no-bookings José; Pizarro is the chef’s full-scale restaurant that moves from small plates to more substantial main courses including a signature presa Ibérica of acorn-fed pork shoulder. The room, with its L-shaped marble counter, open kitchen and Spanish tiling, manages to feel both neighbourhood and destination.

Pizarro is located at 194 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ, United Kingdom

Sabor

At Sabor, Bilbao-born chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho distils her years of London experience into something more expansive than the standard tapas formula: a ground-floor counter where the classics are executed with contemporary flair, and a first-floor ‘asador’ devoted to regional cooking such as the showstopping Segovian suckling pig. The chef’s follow-up restaurant, Legado in Shoreditch, was awarded a Michelin star six months after opening in August 2025.

Sabor is located at 35-37 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BR, United Kingdom

Tranga

This long-running neighbourhood gem serves a daily-changing menu in which quality produce is given elegant treatment. Expect piquillo peppers stuffed with prawn bechamel and shellfish fumet, or a paella of Ibérico pork tenderloin, alongside a carefully chosen list of sherries and Catalan natural wines. The candle- and chandelier-lit interiors, strewn with vintage finds, are as attractive as the cooking.

Tranga is located at 61 Newington Green, London N16 9PX, United Kingdom

Each year, the Serpentine Summer Party is a highlight of London's social calendar. Held to celebrate the newly unveiled pavilion while raising funds for the gallery's year-round free programme, the evening has evolved into an all-encompassing work of art in its own right.

This year's edition, which took place on Tuesday 23 June, marked a new chapter for the annual fundraiser, with the architects behind the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion, Lanza Atelier, collaborating with New York-based artist and creative director Laila Gohar – fresh from her vegetable merry-go-round triumph at Salone del Mobile – to shape the evening's creative direction. Together, they conceived an immersive programme spanning architecture, furniture, food and performance, extending the pavilion beyond its role as a backdrop into the heart of the event.

Behind the scenes at the Serpentine Summer Party 2026

The Furniture

At the centre of the collaboration was Lanza Atelier's Spiral Bench, a modular seating system composed of individual elements that can be stacked, rearranged and expanded. Mirroring the geometry of the Mexico City studio's brick-walled pavilion, the benches also became stages for Gohar's culinary interventions, including servings of esquites and elotes. 'Like the spiral itself, an ancient symbol of creation, transformation and renewal, the bench grows organically through movement and conversation,' said the architects.

Inside the pavilion, Lanza Atelier also unveiled a limited-edition stool inspired by the distinctive curves of the Coco de Mer seed. Crafted from natural materials, the collectible piece continues the studio's ongoing exploration of organic form, artisanal production and nature-led design.

The Food

Meanwhile, Gohar's culinary programme brought an air of mischief and magic, with food 'appearing unexpectedly' throughout the pavilion in a sequence of edible encounters featuring corn, mole and chocolate – the latter supplied by Mexican chocolate brand Casa Bosques. 'I've always been drawn to ingredients that carry entire worlds inside them,' she said. 'Somewhere between architecture, landscape, and banquet, the party becomes a living composition shaped by the people's movement.'

The party's guests – made up of leading figures from the worlds of art, architecture, fashion, design and beyond – discovered a corn station, mole and tamale bar, and chocolate bricks modelled on those used to construct the pavilion, alongside hibiscus, mango and guava sorbets. Signature drinks included ginger margaritas, Fire Palomas and jalapeño sodas.

Art Installations

Another highlight was The Weight of Air, a series of flowing silk fabric installations created by Gohar. Animated by the wind, the suspended forms echoed the pavilion's recurring spiral motif while introducing moments of movement throughout the site. 'Taking inspiration from the spiral and the serpentine line, the work uses fabric, air and motion to create a visual language of rhythm, movement and transformation,' explained Gohar.

Greeting guests on arrival, the installation acted as a welcoming gesture, accompanied by servings of aloo matar and warming chai, a subtle nod to Host Committee Chair Isha Ambani's commitment to championing Indian art, design and craft.

Continuing the playful mood, guests also got the chance to wander through the suspended yellow strands of Jesús Rafael Soto's Pénétrable BBL Jaune (1999; 2023 Edition). This immersive public installation by the Venezuelan kinetic artist is installed in the park next to the gallery and forms part of Serpentine's summer programme. 'It's everything Serpentine stands for: connecting artists, architects and audiences, here in the park, free and open to all,' said CEO of Serpentine, Bettina Korek.

While the pavilion architects have been increasingly involved in shaping the annual party, this collaboration marks the first time Serpentine has invited them to collaborate with an artist in bringing the Summer Party to life. In doing so, it further dissolves the boundaries between architecture, art, design and performance.

Nora Chipaumire (styled ‘nora chipaumire’) describes gadzi as an ‘organism’, a term she feels suits it better than ‘installation’. Live performance, sculpture, touch, sound, and moving images share one space, brought to life by people moving through it. ‘My organism holds energy,’ she says, explaining that the work is meant to be experienced physically, through the connection between body and space rather than as an object to view.

Presented as Tate Modern's Infinities Commission 2026, curated by Valentine Umansky and Francis Hardy, gadzi takes its name from gadziguru, the oldest and most powerful feminine presence in Shona cosmology, an indigenous African worldview. Drawing on the legends, stones, and soil of Zimbabwe, the work transforms Tate Modern’s Tanks into an immersive environment where visitors move through sculptural forms, sit on speakers embedded within them, and experience sound physically as it travels. Built from wood, wire, and cardboard, the monumental sculptures give new meaning to everyday materials. Over the past decade, Chipaumire's practice has increasingly focused on the stories and cosmologies of the Shona people, drawing on ancestral knowledge and looking beyond the colonial histories that shaped southern Africa.

Chipaumire rarely separates the physical from the philosophical and almost never speaks about the work as a collection of materials or disciplines. Instead, her work explores memory, landscape, and what it means to remain. At its core, gadzi is shaped by an understanding of the feminine rooted in ancestral belief, moving fluidly between installation and performance to give form to a philosophy that has long existed beyond ‘the very dominant Eurocentric ways in which we try to think about ourselves’.

Chipaumire is not interested in presenting the feminine as a metaphor but as a way of understanding the world, grounded in maturity, lived experience, and knowledge passed across generations. Now 61, she believes gadzi could only have come to life at this point in her career. ‘I'm old enough now to be able to tackle perhaps concerns that are outside of time, and also old enough as a woman to understand what is sacred about the feminine.’ She returns to this phrase almost instinctively, linking age not only to experience but to another way of understanding knowledge itself.

The same refusal to separate ideas from lived experience emerges when the conversation turns to sound. Chipaumire begins with the body: ‘Sound is vibration. It's breath. We are in sound as we breathe, as we speak. Every time we make our voice, and we open our throat, we are in sound, so this is a physical experience.’ Within gadzi, that physicality is carried by a monumental dub sound system embedded throughout the installation. Broadcast through ‘mountains of speaking wood’, the sounds of Chimurenga, both a revolutionary movement and Zimbabwe's celebrated musical tradition, meet the deep bass frequencies of dub. The handmade resonators acknowledge the ingenuity of African and African diasporic approaches to sound technology, where vibration is as significant as melody. ‘To me, sound is physical, is visceral, is the body, is inside of the body.’

Movement, for Chipaumire, is inseparable from sound and the act of listening itself; gadzi is experienced through the body before it is understood intellectually, allowing vibration, movement, and landscape to unfold together. Makeshift lights fashioned from repurposed petrol bottles cast a soft glow across the room, while moving images show the artist navigating the balancing rocks with care. ‘You can walk in and allow your heart to lead,’ she says. ‘This too is the highest form of thinking.’

On view until 23 August 2026, gadzi draws on Zimbabwe's balancing rocks to reflect on the longer histories of colonialism and extraction that continue to shape the present, but the commission refuses to be defined by absence or loss, turning its attention instead to what cannot be taken. ‘There are aspects of us that are not harvestable, that are not extractable, and it is this which I bring into this space. The refusal, the obtuseness to say, “And still we stand, proudly, with elegance.” You could not extract this beauty.’

Here, Chimurenga, literally meaning ‘revolution’, sits alongside dub and punk, allowing different histories of resistance to speak to one another through sound. ‘They are all sounds, different registers, different harmonisations of our collective no. Whether the dub coming from the New World, the Chimurenga coming from the old world, the punk coming from the centre of the so-called Commonwealth, they are all sounds, frequencies, volumes that are saying no.’

A series of live activations animate gadzi further with movement and sound. Tate Modern Lates on 26 June sees the commission spill beyond the East Tank with an evening of music, conversation, film, and workshops, followed by performances on 27 and 28 June. A monumental speaker installation, designed with Ari Marcopoulos and Kara Walker, occupies the Turbine Hall, celebrating the enduring legacy of sound systems within the museum.

Questions of identity give way to questions of power, asking not what it means to be African, Black or female, but how those identities came to exist in the first place. ‘These are constructions,’ she says. ‘We were the first resource to be extracted out of Africa. What is power? Is it the strength to extract and sell others, or is it this truth that we remain?’

Chipaumire is less interested in directing how the work should be read than in inviting audiences to move through it on their own terms, entering what she describes as an ‘energy exchange’ where understanding emerges through participation. ‘All the responsibility,’ she says, when asked what role art can play at a moment marked by displacement, extraction and environmental crisis. ‘The artist is the last intellectual, is the last philosopher who can tackle these issues.’

It has been 60 years since the work of Welsh-born, America-residing painter Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010) was exhibited in the UK. Born in 1916 in Llandudno, Sleigh found recognition for her arresting, realist works in her lifetime, yet never achieved the recognition of her peers.

It is an oversight Daniel Malarkey is keen to put right with his solo exhibition of Sleigh’s works, currently on show in Bloomsbury, London. The paintings here span the length of Sleigh’s career, tracing the development of a distinctive style that nodded to classical traditions but was idiosyncratically Sleigh’s own.

Studying at Brighton School of Art in the 1930s, Sleigh noticed the double standards enshrined in the education system early on, particularly in the life-drawing classes, which allowed female, but not male, nudes. She was to internalise these prejudices, reflecting and subverting them throughout her career.

Upon moving to London to study art, Sleigh met her future partner, the critic Lawrence Alloway, and relocated to New York City with him in 1961, where she remained until her death in 2010. There, the couple became part of a vibrant artistic circle, with members including Joan Semmel, Alice Neel, Miriam Schapiro, and Agnes Martin. Sleigh took a wider interest in the feminist artist movement, taking crucial roles in feminist collaboratives and considering a new representation of women.

While she enjoyed painting still lifes and landscapes, Sleigh was primarily a portrait painter, of herself, her partner Alloway, whom she painted more than 50 times, and group portraits of female artists, including Agnes Denes, Nancy Spero, and Howardena Pindell. Her male nude paintings were controversial, yet in their intimacy and great respect for their subject, they were entirely unlike anything else being created at the time. She noted: ‘I am primarily a portrait painter. In the past, portraiture and the nude were usually separate genres, but new expectations have been inspiring to me.’

Alongside a selection of still lifes, landscapes and a self-portrait now on show in London, there is The Bridge, created by Sleigh in 1963. In the flesh, her reclining nude comes brilliantly to life, eschewing idealism and embracing the female form in all its real beauty.

Sylvia Sleigh at Malarkey, 48 Russell Square, London, WC1B 4JP, until 15 July 2026

danielmalarkey.com

In 1951, photographer Bob Mizer published the first issue of his quarterly magazine, Physique Pictorial. Posing as a bodybuilding guide, to comply with the strict obscenity laws of the time, Mizer’s richly illustrated production was one of the first aimed at a gay, male audience.

Inside, photographs of male bodybuilders were presented as artworks, rooted in realism, with each image accompanied by the corresponding model’s real name, age and vital statistics. An eclectic cultural canon launched the careers of artists and celebrities, including Tom of Finland, whose first drawings were published in Physique Pictorial’s pages, and George Quaintance and Dom Orejudos, whose work sat alongside early photographs of model and actor Joe Dallesandro and fitness coach Jack LaLanne.

The magazine, which ran for 39 years, has left a lasting impact, with artists including David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe citing it as an inspiration for their own work. In its celebration of the male body from a pop culture niche, it quietly and defiantly normalised a sensual male beauty.

Now, JW Anderson is the latest to pay homage, presenting an exhibition, ‘Spartacus,’ at his Soho, London store. The name is taken from the chosen pseudonym of the magazine’s illustrator, who was required to adopt a false identity – their true identity remains unknown.

JW Anderson has chosen 40 of Spartacus’ works, once privately owned by Mizer, and now able to view throughout the rest of Pride Month, up to 6th July.

JW Anderson presents: ‘Spartacus, Bob Mizer’s Pictorial Physique’ at the Soho, London boutique until 6 July

As trends in workspace and retail keep shifting, Cubitts, the British spectacle maker, unveils today (25 June 2026) its new headquarters – a home for the brand's entire operation. Set near King's Cross, on the edge of north London, the new HQ is titled The Yard, and brings together frame and lens making, creative, repair, consultation, exhibition and training under one roof, in a subtly spectacular space that blends from design, production and client-facing services and events.

Tour the new Cubitts headquarters in London

When he came across their current base, Cubitts' founder, Tom Broughton, had been mulling over the idea of a permanent home for his business for a while. The makers' previous studio and office were located in the area (Cubitts was founded in Kings Cross in 2013), but had far outgrown the available space – and given the brand's attention to detail and design-led aesthetic, it made absolute sense for them to have a bespoke home.

'We were constrained by the [old] space rather than enabled,’ says Broughton. ‘And here, I'm hopeful we will be enabled by [the new one]. We want it to be a space where you can be really proud to bring passers-by, neighbours, customers... It can be a place where people can spend time with each other.'

The new building occupies a former Victorian stables that once served the nearby Crosse & Blackwell vinegar brewery – the biggest in the capital. It had gone through different lives and uses since then and, when Cubitts came into the picture, it was in need of a refresh.

Keeping the original architecture's utilitarian, brick materiality, and warehouse-like character felt intuitive. It also aligned well with the sense of honesty, efficiency and calculated rawness that can also be detected in the spectacle brand's product.

Now, the project, on which Cubitts worked closely with studio 51 Architecture, is a mix of exposed period surfaces, refreshed historic details, colour pops, and carefully selected, tactile furniture – which makes the whole at once full of personality, comfortable and of its time.

Beyond style, however, Broughton's vision is indeed one of community, as he sees the new company's home as more than just a production facility or a set of desks. 'When we took on this [project], it was always like, how do we design it so it doesn't feel like an office? Which was why the office bit is a footprint of probably about 15 per cent of the building... The rest of it can be everything else that we want the [brand] to represent. Put the product at the middle. Have production under one roof.'

Enabling human potential through spaces that people want to inhabit in a meaningful way, fostering relationships and collaboration, was also a key driver: 'Our biggest cost by far is people. If you can create an environment where those people can flourish and work more effectively, it will pay for itself 100 times over. I don't think this is indulgent. I think it's necessary.'

In that spirit, everything is arranged around a central, double-height space – a kind of indoor 'plaza' – where a frame-making workshop operates: the business's heart. Also on the ground floor, around this area, are the company's production facilities and optical laboratory, which mix handmade elements and cutting-edge five-axis CNC machines.

A sequence of smaller, more cocooning areas offers space for private consultations, meetings and also room for the large Cubitts archive. Deskspace is upstairs, alongside a generous central kitchen and entertaining area – a fluid space Broughton hopes to use for the Cubitts community, from clients to creatives and locals. More rooms on the top level might develop into apartments for guests and residencies.

Beyond the architects, Cubitts collaborated with more designers, artists and makers from its broad universe, who were involved in different parts of the building, helping to craft a home that feels a collaborative effort – but also a true representation of the brand's ethos as a whole.

'[The paint specialist] chose the [yellow] colour [throughout the interior] to match the yellow from a dress worn by Brigitte Bardot from the late 1960s,' Broughton explains, elaborating on his discussions with paint maker Simon March. Meanwhile, artist David Shrigley created a large mural – a brightly coloured cockerel – on the building's side, marking its creative nature and public-facing intentions.

The mural, the open-door policy and the series of events Cubitts is planning for the next few months all indicate the brand's vision to not only set strong roots in its new home but also be an active part of the neighbourhood.

'There's a little bench built into the front. And we found out from the neighbours that locally, it has been called “the seat of wisdom”. And people just stop there and have a think,' Broughton says. It's an element, and a spirit, he intends not only to maintain, but to build on – fostering creativity and community, hand by hand, in Cubitts' new London home.

cubitts.com

It’s exactly a decade since the epic foot-shooting exercise of Brexit was set in motion. A new design exhibition, ‘The Other Side: Ten Years after the Referendum’, features the work of ten creative practitioners, including graphic designers, type designers, artists, architects and product designers, offering up a graphic view of the current state of play.

Curated by GraphicDesign& and designed by LucienneRoberts+, a team consisting of Lucienne Roberts, John McGill, Rebecca Wright, the show is at Pentagram's Osh Gallery in London’s N1 until Friday 26 June 2026.

The raw material is of particular interest. As Lucienne Roberts explains, ‘In 2020, GraphicDesign& published The Other Side: An Emotional Map of Brexit Britain. The book reads ‘Remain’ in one direction, flip it over and the focus is ‘Leave’. Included are the voices of 26 Leave and 24 Remain voters from throughout the UK. Every MP received a copy.’

It’s safe to say the publication didn’t rock nearly enough boats. Hence the existence of a number of unsold copies. ‘Our distributors got in touch, asking if we would like the few remaining copies of the book pulped,’ Roberts continues. ‘[We decided] we’d like them to become something new. Here are the results of this decision. We sent ten designers, ten (or more) copies of the book, inviting them to make a personal response to this poignant anniversary. “Feel free to draw or write on them,” we said. “Do cut, shred or pulp them.” Here is what happened next.’

Here are the results, and the creatives’ personal insights on Britain ten years post-Brexit.

‘The Other Side: Ten Years after the Referendum’

Hugh Miller: The works draw on post-Brexit financial data, referendum statistics and political contradiction to explore the consequences of separation and nationalism. The paper suit is made in collaboration with Harris Elliott – it’s a symbolic stand-in and a surface for statistics, headlines and contradictory political narratives.

How do I feel about Brexit now? Brexit still feels like a bad dream come true. A decision shaped by false promises that left us worse off, still burdened by red tape. It exposed the corruption of those meant to serve us. In today’s political landscape, hope and optimism feel increasingly distant.

Michael Marriott: [My work is] a small side table for a cup of tea / glass of wine / etc. My first thought was how to make something useful, something that would extend the life of the book, too. A small side table seemed like a good idea. It’s made using offcuts that I had in the studio already, so it’s all 100 per cent recycled – which is more sensible than Brexit!

How do I feel about Brexit now? Still amazed it was seen as a reasonable thing to do. Still annoyed by the complete stupidness of it.

Stefanie Posavec: For Leavers, achieving Brexit must have felt like birthday and Christmas rolled into one. Riding high on hubris and fantasies of ‘British sovereignty’, everything seemed possible. Ten years on, reality has set in and the party’s over, leaving the rest of us (and future generations) to clean up the mess.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I became a UK citizen only four years before Brexit began. I still have a red EU passport (my first UK passport) and, when I look at it while waiting in long EU border queues, I feel both bereaved and cheated.

Lucienne Roberts, John McGill: Our ten books carry the message ‘HELLO HELL’, legible from both sides of the table. The incisions into each book reveal some of the more poignant pages within. Glimpses of Farage, Boris and an SOS projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover, trigger feelings as powerful now as they were then.

How do we feel about Brexit now? We felt sad then and even sadder now. In the book, writer on human behaviour Ian Leslie describes the vote as akin to a marital breakdown, with neither version of the UK hearing the other. Ten years later, no one is unscathed and, if anything, miscommunication prevails.

STORE: With this work, we represent those too young to vote in 2016. Facilitating in-depth conversations with other young people, we want to give them a voice. We are exploring paper pulping and paper pressing to construct spaces that can facilitate these conversations. Shown here are seats used to give voices and space to this overlooked group.

How do we feel about Brexit now? In the last ten years, three million people have become eligible to vote. We are three of those people. Our opinions weren’t sought at the time of the vote. Now, we face the repercussions of Brexit and the disproportionate effect it will have on our lives.

Sarah Boris: Remain Together is a series of ten artworks using the words ‘Remain’ and ‘Together’ found in the books. The pages are painted in colours from various European flags, leaving only the chosen words visible. These pieces act as tokens of hope in these divisive times.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I was born in London to French parents, so I feel European. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the EU stood for peace and togetherness. The UK left, nothing positive materialised, division grew. Now, we must listen to each other and vehemently oppose the far right.

Marianne Mueller, Mia Mueller Kneer: Eurotrash shows the five prime ministers connected with Brexit operating a standard office shredder. Like these pieces of legislation, The Other Side’s deliberation – to remain in or leave the EU – has become redundant in the face of ‘Brexit done’. Reduced to shreds, the remains of the books now lie discarded like trash on the gallery floor.

How do we feel about Brexit now? Brexit has affected us deeply, both personally and professionally. It has been a catalyst for many significant shifts, from becoming dual nationals to moving countries, opening a new office and shifting school systems to remain within the EU. For us, Britain was the ultimate model for a cosmopolitan society, a sentiment spoiled by Brexit.

Ella Krispel: I use weaving to reinsert what has been lost, or deliberately stripped away, from charged subjects like Brexit. For this project, I wanted to explore the aesthetic attributes of historical artefacts, of relics from another time. As it developed, I wanted to situate Brexit in history, to see it at a distance. The imperfect documentation, fragmented narratives and incomplete framing of the piece mirror the fragility of memory and knowledge over time.

How do I feel about Brexit now? I challenge people when they claim Britain has been harmed by immigration. The response is often, ‘But you're not an immigrant!’ They are unaware this reveals misguided beliefs about the identities of immigrants and definitions of immigration. Brexit didn’t create such views, but it did solidify them, with current media and policymakers deepening the damage.

Rebecca Wright: Using the cut-out letterforms from HELLO HELL, the companion piece by GraphicDesign&’s Lucienne Roberts with John McGill, I have sought to take something left behind and turn it into something hopeful. Brexit changed how I felt about and understood my sense of home. It shattered my belief that we were a country where all of us could feel welcome and where we were welcoming to others. But, ten years on, despite everything, a stubborn hope of home remains…

How do I feel about Brexit now? Still sad but also determined. I do not believe that Brexit accurately reflects or should define who we are as a nation, or our core values.

YiMiao Shih: I wrinkled pages [of the book] with watercolour – a literal soaking – as I depicted a variety of British scenes. Then I used torn pages to make paper pulp reliefs embedded with stitched imagery. In these, I revisited the fictionalised Rabbit Referendum of my project Rabbrexit Means Rabbrexit (2019), tiny embroideries that draw on myth.

How do I feel about Brexit now? My version of post-Brexit reality doesn’t scream positivity. In the aftermath, the right wing gathered traction. I fear they will continue to stoke division, while differing echo chambers deepen it further.

‘The Other Side’ runs until Friday 26 June 2026, 11am-4pm, Osh Gallery, The Old Sorting House, 46 Essex Road, London N1 8LN

@oshgallerylondon, graphicdesignand.com, @graphicdesignand_, luciennerobertsplus.com, @luciennerobertsplus_

Frida Kahlo’s reputation precedes her. Even those who aren’t familiar with her work will recognise her ubiquitous portrait, the aura of which has been in danger of eclipsing her work. It is an oversight Tate Modern is keen to rectify with the major new exhibition, ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’, which pairs Kahlo’s work with that of her contemporaries and later artists, including Kiki Smith, Judy Chicago and Ana Mendieta. The move cements Kahlo’s place in the art canon, and it seems appropriate that an artist so taken over by legend and myth should share exhibition space with those who respect, acknowledge or have been inspired by her.

It is a shame Kahlo’s work has been outshone by her celebrity, as, in its strikingly surreal composition, it is sharply emotive (although Kahlo rejected the surrealist label itself). She created around 150 works in her lifetime, a third of which were self-portraits. More than 30 of these representations are here, tracing the way Kahlo’s self-perception developed, fractured and rebuilt itself throughout her lifetime, running parallel to the health troubles that plagued her.

Born in Mexico City in 1907, Kahlo established an aesthetic entirely her own, after a difficult start that saw her suffer from polio as a child and, later, chronic pain for the remainder of her life following a near-fatal bus crash. It left her fragmented, a sum of her political, physical and spiritual sides that united to create a magnetic private and public persona.

This fluidity takes shape in the portraits in the exhibition, and we vividly see Kahlo secure in her Mexican identity, documenting her experience as a disabled woman, commitment to social activism and influence on LGBTQI+ art.

Despite André Breton’s identification with and deep admiration for the artist – he called her work ‘a ribbon around a bomb’ – Kahlo consistently rejected surrealism, the movement he co-founded, as a definition of her art, arguing her works were rooted in reality, rather than dreams. Still, many works in Tate Modern’s show overlap with the surrealists’ fantastical view of life, intertwining religious motifs and folklore and fraught with natural imagery – from spider monkeys to tangled vines and thorns – symbolising both the endless pain and deep spirituality that accompanied Kahlo throughout her life.

‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’ is at Tate Modern from 25 June 2026 until 3 January 2027, tate.org.uk

A joint project between artist Rana Begum and Steve Webb of engineering firm Webb Yates sees a pink, fenced sculpture erected in the heart of London. Fabricated in collaboration with open-access workshop BLOQs, with materials lent by Albion Stone, No.1616 Fence (2026) is a timely response to the 2026 London Festival of Architecture's theme, 'Belonging'. The sculpture is reflected and refracted by the wide windows of the central London brutalist architecture landmark Space House, offering a moment of quiet contemplation on what it means to belong, and indeed to not belong.

Explore Rana Begum and Webb Yates' installation for LFA 2026

The piece is the latest in a series of collaborations for Begum and Webb. As with their previous installation in Verbier, No. 1387 Fence, the pair set themselves the challenge of erecting their sculpture with minimal environmental impact, by using a base of materials native to the site. In Verbier, these were logs; in London, Portland stone.

Webb explains: 'So much art has a big lump of concrete under the ground… Here, the context is the City of London and Portland stone. We have a good relationship with Albion Stone, so they lent us a block. The reason [the sculpture is] clamped [to the plinth] is so the block isn't cut or broken [...] there's no welding or cutting, everything can be taken to bits.' He continues, 'We’re trying to do something that brings a lot of joy, but actually isn't wasteful or impactful.'

On the origins of this body of work, Begum explains: 'I think for me, when I'm making (the work), it wasn't about identity, it wasn't about culture, it wasn't about religion. I realised one of the things I've been really driven by is this idea of the infinite. Like, how tall Steve can get this to go, but I love that you can play with the idea of the infinite. You can push the boundaries of some of the limits of engineering as well as this visual splendour that you have with material and sculpture and spaces.'

Begum and Webb are quick to highlight that the making of this sculpture goes beyond just the hands of an artist and an engineer, with many other actors involved; namely, Arnauld Nichols, director of BLOQs (the UK’s largest open-access factory) and Sam Kennedy of Commissioned by You, a studio that operates from the facility. Says Nichols: 'We've been around for 14 years. We call ourselves a pay-as-you-go factory, and we're there to provide anyone access to really good manufacturing equipment and workspace.'

With more than 1,000 small and medium businesses, BLOQs boasts a network of users working at all types of scales. 'Our whole mission is, don't tie people down to creativity, let them do [manufacturing] when they need it. [We offer] machines that are normally unaffordable to small, medium, or even large businesses; you put amazing modern tech together with new or existing talent, and then that brings great stuff.’

This way of working couldn’t have been a better fit for Begum and Webb’s site-specific, temporary installation. 'It's a combination of vision and sign-off and delivery, when no one's doubting each other,' affirms Begum.

With uncharacteristically hot and stormy weather expected for the month of June, when LFA runs, Webb Yates had to conduct climate-related stress tests and even consider the possibility of people climbing on the piece – a totemic-like sculpture that commands a moment of pause, pushing the gaze upwards to see how it contrasts with the giant skyscrapers that enclose it.

On the theme 'Belonging', Webb says: 'Belonging had a slightly sinister edge to me. And I think with the vision, the fencing, our collaboration is [about not belonging]. You know, we're working together across fields and across fences and barriers, and we're going where we don't belong.'

ranabegum.com

webbyates.com

London workspace One Triton Square has just been given a refresh by the architecture studio Piercy&Company, bringing the nine-storey 1990s office building into the 21st century through smart internal arrangements and a considered, timber-led materiality. The project is part of the Regents' Place campus and was developed by British Land and Royal London Asset Management (Arup is leading the building's overall reconfiguration). Within this context, Piercy&Company spearheaded the communal areas' transformation, crafting an interior that is not only fit for contemporary purpose, but also exudes a soft, organic minimalism and a welcome balance.

Discover Piercy&Company’s One Triton Square interior

Piercy&Company worked on the full range of common areas within the tower – from the ground-floor entrance lobby to event, collaboration and breakout spaces throughout. Meeting rooms and shared amenity spaces at Levels 1 and 2 and flexible offices and the Triton Lounge and its adjacent terrace at Level 6 were also included.

The vision was for all these areas to adhere to a single vision – one that prioritises innovation and accessibility within a cohesive 'ecosystem of adaptable spaces', the architects explain.

Fiona Neil, director & head of interiors at the London-based practice, explains: ‘Unrecognisable from its previous life as a trading floor, the shared Level 1 now exudes calm and sophistication, becoming an interconnected sequence of spaces that flow in and out of one another, creating pockets of activity alongside places to rest. We took our lead from the rigour of the original building’s design, as well as from scientific work, and juxtaposed this with more playful and softer moments.'

Throughout the building, crisp, clean geometries have been juxtaposed with soft, organic or engineered, tactile materials. Sensory warmth and richness have been at the forefront of the team's surface selection, in order to craft an interior that encourages both concentration and collaboration.

The material strategy is supported by carefully controlled lighting and careful acoustic treatments everywhere. The project features clear wayfinding designed by Frost Collective.

For its efforts, the building has been rated BREEAM Outstanding for its sustainable architecture approach, while art curation by New Public further enhances the interior's layering. Featured pieces include works by artists such as Anicka Yi, Majeda Clarke, Eleanor Lakelin, Richard McVetis, Blast Studios and makers from Cockpit Studios.

Tim Downes, development director at British Land, said: 'Piercy has really delivered on the brief to humanise the interior of a big, intensely engineered building. Many of the occupiers who will take space at One Triton will spend hours performing highly concentrated periods of deep work, and the ability for them to step away from their screens or lab benches into a place of calm tranquillity to recharge and recalibrate has been a big draw. The ambience of the space hits you the moment you walk in.'

piercyandco.com

Aesop Queer Library returns for its sixth edition. Swapping beauty products for books, the Australian skincare brand transforms its Soho location into a literary hub between the 3-5 July. This year also welcomes a Reading Room, located in Aesop Spitalfields, and at its Brighton outpost. As always the Queer Library pop-up invites visitors to browse an array of titles by LGBTQIA+ authors and allies, no purchase required.

Step inside Aesop's Queer Library

The diverse array of books on offer spotlights authors from around the globe and provides a platform for underrepresented voices. This year, the library focuses on the queer body and how it can challenge assumptions, give greater visibility to stories too often obscured from view, and serve as an act of joyful resistance.

The 2026 edition titled ’Body of Work’, further champions this, and highlights charitable bodies including the national LGBTQIA+ support line, Switchboard. Since its founding in 1974, the volunteer-led helpline has supported 4 million people. Following last year’s feature title Marsha, by activist, artist and writer Tourmaline, this year explores The Log Books, a literary tribute which showcases a variety of the lives Switchboard has impacted.

‘Being included in the Aesop Queer Library for Pride is a real honour,’ says The Log Books authors Tash Walker and Adam Zmith. ‘At the heart of The Log Books is a simple but radical act: listening. We spent years listening to stories that were hidden from us when we were growing up – stories that should have been ours to know. This book is our attempt to build the world we should have grown up in. Knowing that someone can walk into an Aesop store this Pride, pick up a copy for free, and take it home – that access, that visibility – is exactly what queer stories deserve. Not just to be cherished, but to be known.’

Much like the Aesop shops filled with aromas, Walker and Zmith see their book as a ‘rich cacophony of LGBTQ+ life and history in Britain, full of highs and lows, progress and backlash, and the real stories of queer people across the generations’.

The authors continue, ‘The past fifty years or so have seen enormous change for members of the LGBTQ+ community – and our book documents this, through the questions and concerns raised on calls to Switchboard. There's the temptation to think of that as 'history', or something that we've gone through and it's done. But in fact, so many individual queer people today struggle, and trans people especially are being demonised in public life; in many ways, we've turned back the clock. We have the sense that history is repeating, but that's only because we know this history in the first place. So what we want readers to take away from the book is that the LGBTQ+ community is rich, complicated, messy—and our rights are fragile.’

aesop.com

Aesop Queer Library, Soho
Aesop Soho, 41 Lexington Street, London W1F 9AJ Friday 3 July – Sunday 5 July
Friday: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Saturday: 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Sunday: 12:00 – 6:00 PM

Aesop Queer Reading Room, Spitalfields
Aesop Spitalfields, 75-77 Brushfield Street, London E1 6AA Friday 3 July – Sunday 5 July Friday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Saturday: 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Sunday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Aesop Queer Reading Room, Brighton
104-105 Gloucester Road, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 4AP Friday 31 July – Sunday 2 August
Friday: 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Saturday: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, Sunday: 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Nick Jones, founder of the Soho House group, has spent more than three decades shaping how a certain generation wants to eat, drink, work, linger and belong. At St. Clement, his anticipated new hotel in London, that instinct has been turned inward. Here, everything he finds annoying about hotels has been removed, softened or rethought: No fussy check-in, no paid-for minibar snacks, no laundry forms, no promise of a river view unless there is actually a river view. And certainly, no performative luxury.

At St Clement, Nick Jones rewrites the rules of the London hotel

St. Clement sits at 180 The Thames, part of the wider 180 Quarter being developed by British entrepreneur Mark Wadhwa, whose work around 180 The Strand has already pulled this once-overlooked pocket of the city into a cultural mecca for the groovy and cool: residences, restaurants, galleries, libraries, studios, and a new London square all stitched into one address. Jones knows the weight of the site and its privileged vista: ‘This is where London started,’ he says during a walk-through with Wallpaper*, looking out across the city.

The interiors, by London-based Eagle + Hodges – the studio founded by Alex Eagle with Sophie Hodges in 2016 – avoid the over-dressed mood of many new luxury hotels. It is polished and sleek, but it does not want to vaunt. In Jones’ own words: ‘This is our take on what a grand dame hotel like The Savoy would be if it were built today. Not bowler hats, stiff suits and high heels, but something a bit more relaxed, closer to cashmere and trainers.’ Indeed, the lobby has the ease of a laid-back, gallery-like private living room, with vintage furniture by George Nakashima and Jean Royère, blossom-heavy tables, and Richard Horwood’s 1799 plan of the City of London anchoring the walls.

All 90 rooms follow in spirit. The 450 sq ft entry-level rooms would pass as suites elsewhere. Jones calls one ‘bog-standard’ during the tour, then immediately points out the details that make it anything but: complimentary non-alcoholic minibar snacks, free laundry and steaming, proper luggage storage, and games boxes. ‘I hate paying for the minibar,’ he says. ‘I hate being charged for a Kit Kat.’

In the bathroom, a mirrored cabinet opens like a beauty apothecary, stocked with a Discovery Kit by beauty brand YLW (You’re Looking Well), Daba sunscreen, Laro dental care, Arlington shaving cream and Pleasing nail polish, among other essentials.

Standout details throughout include generous Eagle & Hodges-designed Rutland sofas and matching armchairs, glowing Brian Clarke glass screens, and bespoke Perfumer H amenities. Meanwhile, the 4,000 sq ft, two-storey penthouse – with its vast river-facing living spaces, fully equipped chef’s kitchen, library anchored by a vintage Bernar Venet sofa from 1993, and wraparound terrace – has the feel of a cinematic collector’s apartment. Rather than oversell the experience, Jones prefers to underplay the promise and let the hotel exceed expectations.

Food and drink venues are positioned as their own destination. Café Clement, the all-day restaurant and bar from chef Danny Bohan, reads like a London brasserie with French and Italian instincts: cheese soufflé with Gruyère and nutmeg; Sea bass carpaccio with citrus and herbs; an open Scottish lobster omelette with crème fraîche and tarragon served at breakfast, lunch and dinner; Roast duck for two with dripping potatoes and St Clement sauce.

Bobbi’s Bar takes the mood later. Open until 3 am and featuring a sound system by Devon Turnbull, it sits in a darker register: wood panelling, warm lamps, glowing bottles and the faint danger of staying one drink too long. A daybed running alongside the bar stools makes it an ideal spot for a final nightcap before bed. The cocktail to order is the Clementini – a mix of ‘Oranges and Lemons’ vodka, Champagne, Oyster Vermouth and olive oil. Add a pickle to make it dirty.

More is still to come. Lunette, chef Florence Knight’s first solo restaurant after Sessions Arts Club, will open on the top floor in September. A private screening room is also in the works, alongside a series of event spaces for dinners and parties of up to 100 guests. Then there is the Health Club & Spa. Set to open later this year for both hotel guests and members, it spans three levels and centres around a 25m pool running alongside the Thames. Around it: weight training, cardio, banya, steam room, hammam, sauna and ice baths.

As our tour with Jones comes to an end, it becomes clear that St Clement is not selling a one-night fantasy of London, but the promise of return. Jones wants the property to be used regularly, not simply visited once for the novelty of a new opening. That distinction matters. ‘We want people to decide to change this to be their new London address,’ he says, before the conversation turns to his plans to host a ‘cabbies’ breakfast.

St. Clement is located at 180, the Thames, 12 Temple Pl, Temple, London WC2R 2NF, United Kingdom

Japanese hand rolls are, ahem, on a roll in London – this year we’ve already welcomed Kumori and Maki Nori to Soho, with Saltwater and Miokuru due later this summer. They all have Temaki to thank for their popularity – the Brixton sensation which earned a devoted following in south London and beyond for owner AM Dupee’s Californian approach to Japanese cuisine. Now, after four years south of the river, Dupee has upped sticks from Brixton to Mayfair to a new and significantly larger home, with an expanded menu to match.

Wallpaper* dines at Temaki Mayfair

The mood: Counter culture

Thessaloniki-based architecture and interior-design studio Adamidis designed the space to feel ‘modern, relaxed and a little bit Japanese-inspired’, says Dupee, who wanted minimalism without coldness in much the same way that the food marries Japanese precision to Californian mellowness. ‘We used artwork and texture to bring some warmth and personality into the restaurant,’ Dupee says, ‘with neutral colour and clean lines to let the produce really stand out.’

Upstairs is a stripped-back wooden chef’s counter for 14 diners, with handrolls passed directly over the oak. Downstairs is more restaurant-in-feel, with a softer, listening-bar vibe, seating gathered around a central counter and a dry-ager displaying the raw materials that end up on the plate.

The food: Roll with it

The restaurant takes its name from te (hand) and maki (roll), the no-chopsticks-required version of sushi believed to have been invented in the 1920s and inspired by American ice-cream cones.

Like all the best ideas, temaki is blissfully simple: pristine fish, vinegared rice and crisp nori, rolled to order and best enjoyed straight from the chef’s hand. The signature Temaki combines akami, otoro and caviar, while fillings such as prawn tempura, baked scallop and barbecued eel demonstrate the breadth of the format. The set menus that built the restaurant’s loyal Brixton following remain a cornerstone of the experience, providing an ideal introduction to Temaki’s Californian-inflected take on Japanese dining.

Also order a couple of rounds of Japanese small plates designed for sharing: some yellowtail sashimi here, some grilled aubergine with sesame sauce there, with some crispy rice topped with spicy trout for carbs, a gyoza of the day if you’re still peckish and, if you really insist on eating with your fingers, an A4 Wagyu slider. After all, who needs chopsticks?

Temaki Mayfair is located at 11 Maddox St, London W1S 2QF, United Kingdom

Saturday 11^th January 1969. Jimi Hendrix and his two musicians arrive in Hamburg, after back-to-back shows in Gothenburg, Stockholm and Copenhagen, for a gig at the Musikhalle. On the way there’s some band business to attend to. The mother of bassist Noel Redding is ‘upset’ with the accountant, and drummer Mitch Mitchell owes Redding £72.

Then, two shows in the rackety German port city: a 6pm performance, which is ‘so-so’. Then, a 9pm, which is ‘brilliant’. The fee: ‘£1000 + 50%’, minus the 20% cut (‘£200+) of the ‘man[ager]’.

In this period, 18 months before his untimely death at 27, Hendrix needs to be gigging at this pace – the London-based musician has a serious rug habit that’s costing him the equivalent of £39,000 a year. As much is evident in the invoice he recently received from Belgravia Galleries: ‘One superfine silk & wool Persian hunting rug… One fine Kasmir [sic] Bokhara rug… One fine Turkish prayer rug…’

Luckily, Hendrix has someone taking care of business. As a scribbled note on the invoice attests, the rug dealers’ bill has been promptly settled by one Trixie Sullivan. A member of the musician’s management team, she is, effectively, his right-hand woman.

Such is the treasure trove of detail about the legendary musician’s period living in London that’s contained in a cache of paperwork saved by Sullivan. She had scooped them up after bailiffs had raided the offices of Anim Records in the wake of the 1973 death in an air-crash of Hendrix’s co-manager Mike Jeffery. For 50 years the documents, along with her meticulously detailed diaries, lay in boxes under her bed in Majorca.

Now having been discovered and annotated by her grandson Jonathan Garcia Sullivan, a selection is going on display in Handel Hendrix House. Located in the London building – at 23 and 25 Brook Street in Mayfair – that both musicians called home, albeit 200 years apart, the museum in part consists of a careful recreation of the flat that Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham shared there.

‘Jimi loved rugs so much, and bought so many of them, that he and Kathy had a load rolled up by the side of the bed, and they just alternated them on the floor,’ says exhibition curator and Handel Hendrix House deputy director Claire Davies. ‘You can see in various photoshoots done in the flat [at the time], there's always a different combination of rugs down. When you're working in a museum, everything can become quite static. So we now rotate our rugs in the same way.’ And, courtesy of Sullivan’s careful documenting of the musician’s expenses and excesses, now there’s a paper trail to back up that ‘living story in these rugs’.

Then in her mid-twenties, Sullivan was the assistant to Jeffery. In reality, she was in charge of the day-to-day affairs of the incendiary guitarist and frontman, who had relocated to London in 1966, and his band.

‘Probably more than 50% of the letters, the bills, all the legal stuff, are signed by my nan,’ Garcia Sullivan says. ‘She was dealing with it all, back and forth with so many different big businesses, anything really.’ And, as evidenced by Sullivan’s note in her diary about the band’s inter-personal dealings and concerned mums, she was more, too.

‘From what I understand, my nan acted like the bossy older sister-slash babysitter to keep them in check. People as chaotic as that probably needed that type of person kicking around, someone who keeps everything rolling.’

‘Trixie’s fielding all the phone calls,’ says Davies. ‘We have to remember that in the Sixties, even having a phone line is a luxury. So if anyone wanted to contact the band, they needed to get to her first and then she'd have to pass on the message.

‘That’s given us such a great record of so much activity,’ she continues. ‘She’s having to write down the notes from all these calls. When they move into Brook Street, Kathy is even ringing Jimmy to ask his opinion on colours for curtains. And it's the same with the band members’ parents – someone’s upset or needs some money. That's all going through Trixie. And thank goodness, because now we’ve documentation of those interactions.’

It was a loose but busy and intense time for Hendrix, who would die in September 1970 after choking on his own vomit while under the influence of wine and barbiturates. The Seattle-born musician had lived mostly in London since late 1966. Between May 1967 and October he released three albums: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland, giving the world now-classics such as ‘Foxey Lady’, ‘Purple Haze’, ‘Voodoo Chile’, ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and his searing cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watch Tower’. There were multiple gigs, heavy use of alcohol and drugs, and many, many nights out. The Trixie trove includes bills for restaurants, like Mr Love, an appropriately groovy eatery, and for clubs, including iconic Swingin’ Sixties spots The Bag o’ Nails and The Speakeasy.

‘There were so many unsettled bills,’ says Davies. ‘And we can now track when and how they were settled. For example, there were phone bills of Jimi’s. We know that Trixie got a taxi to pay some of them directly because we've got cheque stubs and the taxi receipts.

‘And with The Speakeasy and The Bag O’ Nails, they were late payments. We're trying to work out how much that's about lack of cashflow within the business, because Mike Jeffery had a bit of a reputation for not necessarily managing the books particularly well. But also, it's the 1960s and you can't do anything instantly – everything has to be done manually. By default, every bill can be overdue by virtue of it being a manual world.’

For all the revolutions of the time, it's also, still, a conservative world. Going on display at Brook Street is a letter, dictated by Jeffery and typed up by Sullivan, to Frank Mundy, the general manager of the Royal Albert Hall, ‘intended to reassure him that Hendrix won't be inviting nudity in his performances there,’ says Davies. ‘Because there was recently an interview in the Melody Maker in which he was talking about the concept of people taking their clothes off and being at one with music...’ Mundy was ‘really nervous’ that this would lead to mass nudity in the august hall.

‘So Trixie has to reassure him that that's just a completely misquoted and misunderstood quote. But according to her family, she also got up on stage before his performance and told everybody they have to behave themselves and that the audience has to keep their clothes on!’

Sullivan is now 82 and living with late-stage dementia; her family have auctioned off some of her archives, including audio tapes of Hendrix’s music, to help pay for her care. Even in her younger years, though, Garcia Sullivan says that his grandmother never spoke in any detail about her time at the heart of an intense and bohemian music scene. ‘But she was 25, 26 at the time when she was doing all of this. It's crazy. I'm 29 – I couldn't imagine doing all of that at 25 years old.’

How aware is she that this exhibition is happening?

‘We did have a chat with her two months ago about it. But she doesn't know the details. She's a bit too late into dementia to know. But what's interesting with [people with] dementia is that you can still connect with music. My nan won't remember your name. But she’s still singing. And she'll still recognise Jimi Hendrix’s music. It's pretty incredible.’

The Trixie Sullivan Archive goes on display at Handel Hendrix House, 23 Brook Street, London W1K 4HA, from 19^th June

Belonging. The more I have sat with this year's London Festival of Architecture theme, the more I have realised that much of my life and work over the last decade has been shaped by precisely that search – for something I, at times, feel, and something I am continually looking for.

Architecture has given me the opportunity to work across many places, but London remains home. While much of what I share now is rooted here, projects, conversations and experiences come from beyond, from Venice, New York, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Places that have shaped my understanding of culture, exchange, memory and belonging.

These thoughts are also a reflection on London as a global city, a springboard and a place of encounter – a place where people, ideas, traditions and ambitions from around the world meet, overlap and evolve. A place that has provided the foundation for a practice that now works internationally, supported by studios here and in New York, and by collaborators, clients and communities across multiple continents. They are, in many ways, an expanded reflection on that search – on the qualities that make belonging possible.

Jayden Ali discusses the idea of belonging

I will start with a story from this year's Venice Art Biennale, where I found myself taking in Lubaina Himid's contribution to this year's British Pavilion. For those unfamiliar with the exhibition, Himid's presentation centred on painting. Large-scale works that reflected on memory, identity, movement and making, and which continued her decades-long exploration of Black life.

There was a strength to the ensemble of paintings born from the relatively solitary pursuit of mining a lifetime's vulnerability, resistance, experience, and observation to churn them into images of resilience on a vast scale. Multiple, high-saturation paintings, some 8m wide, offered a meditation on what curator and writer, and now Studio Museum in Harlem director, Thelma Golden, encourages us to focus on: ‘the way in which people make work’.

Despite the obvious skill needed to work at such a large scale, the work’s potency comes from inserting into the white void of Venice a vision not only of what could be, but of what is – a complexity embodied in the shifting of a predominant Euro-centric lens to bring into frame the obvious, but that which is often overlooked, that Black people make and have always made.

For me, this engagement with Lubaina's work frames a broader conversation about my own and an examination of some of the qualities that I think are critical to belonging – both for myself and for others:

• Reciprocal dialogues across time
• Multiple ways of making
• The reframing of ‘the centre’

In other words:

• Antiphony
• Polyphony
• Polycentrism

Antiphony

Recently, we [at JA Projects, founded by Jayden Ali] established a studio in New York, which currently covers North America and the Caribbean. The latter geography is a place where I am currently artistic director for an upcoming major theatrical performance.

It is a commission that has brought me into dialogue with the work of Kamau Brathwaite, Barbados' cultural north star, credited with helping give the island and its people a distinctly Caribbean voice rooted in a Black Atlantic sonic tradition – one where cadence, rhythm and performance are deployed in challenge to inherited power structures and imposed ways of speaking, writing and being.

Much of Brathwaite's writing is concerned with questions of arrival, becoming and belonging – questions shaped by a Caribbean history of displacement, migration and survival. And in his work The Arrivants, he has written about those who have come before us.

In my own Venice [Architecture Biennale] moment in 2023, I found myself actively tuning in to the presence of those who had occupied the British Pavilion before me. In addressing the neo-colonial building sitting within the Giardini – representing a nation whose wealth and influence were profoundly shaped by empire – I wanted to build upon how Black and Brown people had occupied space before.

In particular, my work Thunder and Simsek – the steel-pan sculptures that stood within the portico and were fabricated with Jamps and HS Design Studio – was inspired, in part, by Chris Ofili's intervention for the British Pavilion 20 years earlier, in which three flagpoles flew an artwork entitled Union Black. Both mine and Ofili's work were in dialogue and joined their mission to challenge institutions of power. My resonance to, and inspiration from, Ofili's work was an exercise in antiphony – call and response – which the scholar Paul Gilroy defined in his seminal work The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness as a principal formal feature of Black musical traditions.

Polyphony

At the studio, we are interested in collective living – in how people come together to build, maintain and continually remake our shared constructed world, which we understand to be constituted through both immaterial and material components: stories, rituals, performances, agreements and social contracts, as much as buildings, objects, infrastructures and landscapes. These domains are not separate, but mutually reinforcing.

If antiphony concerns itself with a dialogue across time, then it is the idea of polyphony that concerns itself with a dialogue across difference. Much of our work is about listening, seeing and feeling those expressions of difference with a view to understanding how architecture might create conditions in which they can continue to coexist, collide and occasionally find resonance with one another.

Within this, we are particularly interested in moments of cultural confluence. Much of that interest can be traced back to east London, where I grew up, and where, before I was an architect, I was a playworker. For a number of years, I worked at Cherry Trees School in east London, supporting children with complex behavioural needs through the construction of novel play environments – those powered by stories, sound and smoke, as much as by physical props like costumes.

My job was, in many ways, to challenge the power dynamics imposed upon these young people from an early age by the forces of society and the city. It required creative responses to entrenched ideas of exclusion, permission and access, but importantly it taught me to pay attention, acknowledge the contribution of others, be responsive and ‘build’ in the round. When I later studied at the Cass [the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University], in the Free Unit under Robert Mull, Catrina Beevor and Peter Carl, I found a similar spirit. The premise of the unit was that students could define their own interests and develop their own methodologies. Architecture was not presented as a fixed discipline. It remains the basis of how I practice and, also, how I teach.

Many of us creatives and those involved in architecture and planning know the excitement that comes with seeing an idea move from imagination into reality. My hope is that by embracing and designing for the full suite of spatial conditions, value can also be found in the exchange of knowledge and the building of collective confidence. That making becomes something expansive and empowering, challenging inherited assumptions about who gets to participate.

Polycentrism

More recently, two things coalesced at around the same time. The first was attending a conversation by J Kameron Carter at the Swiss Institute in New York as part of a public programme connected to Nolan Oswald Dennis' exhibition ‘overturns’.

The discussion reflected upon the distinction between a circle and an ellipse. The circle, with its single centre, became a way of thinking about systems organised around singular authority. The ellipse offered something different, a geometry structured through multiple points of focus.

Around the same time, I first encountered the text The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism, in which Golden reflected upon the relationship between margin and centre. She wrote: 'Even though I feel that the whole margin/centre debate has been adequately theorised by cultural critics from bell hooks to a whole slate of poststructuralists, I think the salient debate, as we enter the 1990s, is going to be the debate of the centre of the margin… Nobody has adequately talked about the way in which the margin itself has become a hugely conflicted site.'

While reflecting on a different period in time, Golden's observation has stayed with me. Taken together, these two reflections prompted me to think differently about where our work sits in relation to power, authority and influence, and I enjoy it most when it challenges those distinctions.

In our studio, we are inspired by artists, architects and world builders who have acted in that spirit, opened up dialogue and brought collective reading in how we understand the world. It is an influence that has resulted in us overtly considering gathering as a type of infrastructure – ie, that the way the city can support the movement of knowledge and offer care, opportunity, solidarity and belonging is as important as the way more conventional infrastructures support the movement of people, water, energy and goods.

Much of my work and mission is driven by a desire to afford these softer forms of city-making the same seriousness that architecture has traditionally reserved for physical infrastructure. The quality of ‘belonging’ itself can be understood through this lens – as something that must be built, maintained and cared for over time, supported by a network of relationships, rituals, institutions and spaces that allow people to recognise themselves within a wider collective.

These conditions have always been relevant to architecture, yet this remains a disruptive proposition to systems that assume authority resides within established centres and flows outwards. Instead, it suggests something closer to polycentrism. That the centre depends upon your lens, and perhaps this is where antiphony (listening across time) and polyphony (listening across difference) ultimately lead.

Polycentrism asks us to recognise that neither history nor the present is organised around a single point of view. Cities are richer than that; London is richer than that. And belonging, I think, emerges through our capacity to recognise multiple centres of value, knowledge, meaning and influence existing simultaneously alongside one another.

The text is an edited version of Jayden Ali's Murray Lecture, kicking off the London Festival of Architecture 2026 through an exploration of the 2026 theme of 'Belonging', and delivered on 1 June 2026 at the London Centre

‘Traditionally in the art world, we think of scale as a problematic subject,’ says Anish Kapoor, speaking from his London studio as he finalises the works appearing in his major new Hayward Gallery exhibition, opening on 16 June. ‘In the sense that, why is it so big? It is a perfectly legitimate question, it seems to me. Barnett Newman used to say that scale is not a matter of size, it's a matter of meaning.’

For the Mumbai-born, Turner Prize-winning artist, the scale is important for the physical reaction it incites in the viewer, a visceral response brought palpably to life in his landmark exhibition at the Hayward. In his first retrospective in the space for 28 years, new and fundamental works squeeze, drip and disorient in the Hayward’s Brutalist enclaves.

Kapoor’s works ask us to question the reality around us - where are we in the space, and how are we moving through it? How can our perceptions of what is real shift, and why are we so easily prepared to surrender our grip on lucidity when confronted with works which discombobulate us?

Take entering the exhibition, upon which we are immediately confronted with a vast, red, inflated PVC membrane that easily fills the six-metre-high space. Suddenly, we are small, squeezing around the perimeter of the work in a fruitless attempt to see it all. Elsewhere, perception is treated as lightly as proportion, in the epic Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto (2022) which hangs, impossibly, from the ceiling. In subverting the familiar curve of the mountain, Kapoor emphasises the unnatural nature of the act God asked Abraham to do at the location in the title. Kapoor’s mountain runs red with the blood which would have flowed had Abraham sacrificed his son, Isaac.

This exploration into ritual sacrifice, and the inner workings of the body, defines Kapoor’s practice. Upstairs, there are metal trays which ooze with red painted silicone forms that could be clots of tissue; sinews wind their way around the containers and spouts facilitate the draining of the ‘blood.’ All of life, in all its rawness, is here.

‘Think of Jackson Pollock,’ Kapoor says. ‘He pours this paint all over the ground again and again every day, in a kind of mad frenzy, and then takes this thing and puts it on the wall. When you see a Jackson Pollock, it is cosmic. He turns it from Earth and blood and body into cosmos - that's the fundamental alchemical transformation. That's why he's the great artist of that whole generation.’

Kapoor’s own transformations, from material into life matter, are equally sublime, and fundamental to our human experience. There is a room here dedicated to Kapoor’s famous uncoverings of the void, with sculptures in Vantablack – a substance created with nanotechnologies, which means it absorbs 99% of light – presenting delightful optical illusions. Try as you might, you cannot make out the shape, form or silhouette of these works, so entirely swallowed up are they by the material. It is a magic trick, and one in which we cannot trust our own senses.

‘I believe in putting the viewer in the place where it is all possible,’ Kapoor says. ‘[French poet] Guillaume Apollinaire’s notion was to take the viewers to the edge, and push them over - and that remains fundamental.’

Anish Kapoor at Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery from 16 June – 18 October 2026

Birmingham native Aktar Islam is the chef-owner of the city’s Opheem, one of only two Indian restaurants in Britain to hold two Michelin stars (Gymkhana is the other). His original plan, however, was to open Opheem in London – an ambition now realised with the launch of Oudh 1722. The restaurant takes its name from the year Awadh (Oudh), the Mughal province of northern India, was established as an independent province. It marked the birth of a food culture that would thrive for more than a century in the royal city of Lucknow, and now in a three-storey listed Victorian building near Borough Market.

Wallpaper* dines at Oudh 1722

The mood: The texture of time

Islam worked with designer Polina Sychova on interiors inspired by the architectural language of Lucknow – ‘not in an obvious or decorative way,’ Sychova says, ‘but in its atmosphere. The softness of lime-plastered walls, the slightly faded tones, the way arches frame movement through space. There’s a quiet confidence to those interiors that I wanted to hold onto.’

Limewash surfaces create a sense of lived-in depth and texture across the two dining rooms and are paired with walnut joinery and mustard velvets; the effect is intended to envelop diners in a mood of soft intimacy. Green elements such as tiled surfaces and glass details introduce contrast without disrupting the calm. ‘They lift the space,’ Sychova says, ‘in the same way acidity or herbs lift a dish.’

Screened banquettes and smaller rooms, meanwhile, create what she describes as ‘a kind of pacing, similar to how a meal unfolds, with moments of openness giving way to moments of enclosure.’

The food: Courtly cooking

Lucknow was recognised by UNESCO in 2025 as a Creative City of Gastronomy and Islam has channelled that legacy by showcasing the precision and nuance of Awadhi cuisine. So while there is a tasting menu at Oudh, the à la carte is the best way to get the most from the kitchen, especially if you want to share.

Kick off with papads accompanied by notably fresh-tasting chutneys ahead of snacky plates of vibrantly coloured chaat and a headily spiced Herdwick lamb kebab. Larger plates include the slow-cooked dum dishes for which Lucknow is renowned; try the oxtail biryani, steamed to melting tenderness under its pastry lid. Curries include tandoori chicken with smoked tomato cream, which tastes like a rich take on butter chicken, best mopped up with coriander naan.

Ask the clued-up sommelier for advice on Oudh’s 300-strong wine list; the Muses Estate Mouhtaro, a rarely seen red Greek grape grown on the foot of Mount Helicon near Thebes, was a revelation with Indian cooking, like a mouthful of red cherries.

Oudh 1722 is located at 66 Union St, London SE1 1TD, United Kingdom

For those who believe that truly appreciating great design requires more than a glance on a screen – that it must be held and experienced – an unmissable event is arriving in London this weekend.

Basic.Space is an online marketplace spanning luxury fashion, design, art, furniture, collectibles and lifestyle objects, also known for hosting immersive retail experiences. Central to its appeal is a distinctive model of creator-led curation, where designers, artists and tastemakers build and oversee their own 'storefronts'.

Now, the platform has unveiled the first wave of participants for its London debut: a two-day event taking over The Old Selfridges Hotel from 13-14 June 2026, bringing together a mix of creative voices, brands and collectible pieces under one roof.

This marks Basic.Space's first venture outside the US, following successful editions in Los Angeles and New York. Produced in collaboration with creative director Juliana Salazar, the London edition is organised around four pillars: design, art, fashion and sound.

'Discovery has always been at the heart of what we do at Basic.Space, and London embodies that spirit like few other cities,' said Jesse Lee, the platform's founder and chairman of Design Miami.

What kinds of makers and objects can visitors expect? There is a strong emphasis on UK-based talent. Samuel Ross – the artist and designer known for his work across fashion and sculpture – will take part alongside gallerist Max Radford, production designer Jabez Bartlett and Loewe Craft Prize finalist Jobe Burns. Designer Lewis Kemmenoe and London-based jewellery, homeware and accessories brand Completedworks round out the local contingent. Platform:, the art e-commerce destination acquired by Basic.Space in 2025, will also present a dedicated exhibition featuring London galleries Nicoletti and Albion Jeune.

The international roster is equally eclectic. Berlin-based designer Illya Goldman Gubin joins multidisciplinary artist Marcin Rusak, whose practice spans furniture, objects and botanical materials. Paris- and Seoul-based artist and designer Nara Lee will also exhibit, alongside UAE-based creative Roham Shamekh and Melbourne- and Los Angeles-based artist Nick Thomm.

Among the more unexpected additions is Telepathic Instruments, an Australian music technology company founded by collaborators including Tame Impala's Kevin Parker, which will use the event to unveil a limited-edition transparent version of its chord-based synthesiser. Carpenters Workshop Gallery, meanwhile, will bring a collection featuring works by Rick Owens, Karl Lagerfeld, Charlotte Perriand and Jean Prouvé.

To purchase tickets to the event, visit Basic.Space's website

The next chapter in The Dorchester’s most ambitious transformation in over three decades has arrived in the form of a new Royal Suite by Pierre-Yves Rochon. The residence follows the renovation of all guestrooms and suites, as well as The Promenade, Vesper Bar, Artists’ Bar, The Grill and China Tang. While plans for a private members’ club on the rooftop are still to come, Rochon’s latest intervention continues the evolution of the Park Lane grand dame, whose guest list has spanned royalty, Hollywood stars and political leaders since opening in 1931.

Occupying a prominent corner position on the eighth floor, The Royal Suite looks out across Hyde Park’s treetops, the Serpentine and the wider London skyline, from the quartet of chimneys atop Battersea Power Station to the distinctive dome of the Royal Albert Hall. It is also among the largest hotel suites in the city, spanning up to 4,660 sq ft when configured with four interconnected rooms.

For the interiors, the French designer, who recently oversaw a three-year renovation of all 243 rooms and suites at Four Seasons Paris, turned to the legacy of theatre designer Oliver Messel, whose work for The Dorchester remains one of the defining references for the hotel’s exuberant character. Rochon describes the scheme as ‘a mix of traditional British elements, a palette of pastel tones, floral inspirations and details drawn from the 1950s’.

Tour The Dorchester’s Royal Suite

The experience begins through a gallery-like corridor washed in pale pink before entering an oval lobby anchored by a sculptural Bardiglio marble vase from Atelier Prométhée and a collection of historical paintings from the original suite, staged by art consultancy Visto.

The expansive living room is among the suite’s most breathtaking spaces. Celadon and blush tones soften an otherwise formal room, where a decorative ceiling inspired by 18th-century Scottish architect Robert Adam sits above a mirrored fireplace. Here, Rochon layers English and French influences with a collector’s eye: white lacquer and gold-patina ottomans by Henryot & Cie sit alongside armchairs upholstered in English garden-inspired fabrics by GP & J Baker, while a floral Tai Ping rug based on a design by André Arbus anchors the room.

Nearby, a study conceived as ‘a small dark-green box’ offers a moodier counterpoint. A varnished mahogany bookcase, Tisserant sconces, a Chinese-inspired red lacquer desk and a cane armchair lend the room the character of a private library. The shelves are lined with everything from the novels of Jane Austen to volumes on maximalism, automotive design and the English garden.

Meanwhile, the dining room, described by Rochon as having a ‘surprisingly garden-inspired decor’, is wrapped entirely in trellis-pattern wallpaper by Adam Ellis and crowned by a mirrored ceiling with a crystal chandelier by Delisle. A Chinese console and mirror, together with an Aubusson-style rug in shades of celadon and pale pink, subtly echo the aesthetic language established downstairs in The Promenade. A private, fully-equipped kitchen allows The Dorchester’s culinary team, led by director Martyn Nail, to host intimate in-suite dinners for up to ten guests.

The bedroom adopts a lighter tone. A four-poster bed dressed in pale blue silk anchors the space, while a sitting area upholstered in ivory faux leather with diamond-tipped stitching is layered with fabrics in soft shades of pink, blue and green. A polished timber dressing table and upholstered stool reinforce the room’s residential feel, while a figurative painting depicting a napping woman above the seating area adds a touch of theatrical drama. Beyond, a generous dressing room leads into a marble-clad bathroom with a double shower and a freestanding bathtub taking in views across the rooftops of Mayfair and glimpses of Hyde Park beyond.

As expected, the service offering has been thought out to match the scale of the residence. A dedicated butler oversees every stay, while privileges range from complimentary airport transfers and access to a chauffeur-driven car to personalised wellness experiences at The Dorchester Spa. In a nod to its setting, the hotel has also partnered with The Royal Parks charity, with a portion of proceeds from Royal Suite bookings supporting the conservation of London’s historic green spaces.

The Dorchester is located at 53 Park Lane, London W1K 1QA, UK. Rates for the Royal Suite start from £30,000 per night